‘Queen’s Guide’ to Morecambe Bay who from the 1960s escorted visitors across the perilous sands
CEDRIC ROBINSON, who has died aged 88, held for 56 years the historic office of “Queen’s Guide to the Sands”, a position that stretches back to the reign of Henry VIII and was known less formally as the “Moses of Morecambe Bay”.
The 120 square mile bay, just south of the Lake District National Park, was formed after the last Ice Age, when retreating glaciers dumped sediments which formed expanses of sand now up to 80metres deep.
Sea levels rose and the area was flooded, forming a broad, shallow bay, with a tidal range of up to 10.5metres and an ebb tide that can retreat as far as 12km. The bay is particularly fickle and treacherous as it is continually being shaped by swirling currents and racing tides, producing shifting mudflats, deep tidal channels – and lethal quicksands.
In the days when horse-drawn carriages travelling from Lancaster to Kendal were tempted to take a short-cut across the bay, many came to grief; the name of 140 victims are inscribed on a memorial in Cartmel churchyard and Robinson himself had witnessed “two horses go down in quicksand and tractors disappear in seconds, never to be seen again.”
A reminder of the bay’s dangers came in February 2004, when 23 Chinese immigrants died while cockle picking for gangsters. The tragedy led to cockle picking being banned in the bay.
It was the monks of Cartmel Priory who originally provided guides for crossing the sands. Records show that in 1535 a William Gate was the “conductor of all the people of the King over the sands of the sea” and that he was paid by the priory.
After the Dissolution, responsibility was transferred to the Duchy of Lancaster. Thomas Hogeson was appointed the first official King’s Guide to the sands in January 1548. Robinson was appointed in October 1963, as the 25th Guide, and by the time he retired in 2019 was the longest-serving holder of the post since its creation.
Cedric Robinson was born on February 17 1933 in Flookburgh, Lancashire (now Cumbria), into a family of fishermen. He grew up picking cockles with his father on the Morecambe Bay sands and, after leaving school aged 14, fished for shrimps, mussels and flounders (or “flukes”) on foot, by horse and cart and later by tractor. He only once went out in a boat – and did not enjoy the experience.
He was appointed Queen’s Guide after demonstrating his aptitude for navigating the sands. The job paid £15 a year but came with Guide’s Cottage, a 700-year-old tied cottage with a smallholding near Grange-over-sands owned by the Duchy of Lancaster, with no central heating or double glazing – nor, to begin with, any electricity or running water.
Over the next 56 years, striding out mostly barefoot in faded rolled-up jeans, shirt and blue jumper, stick in hand, Robinson led an estimated half a million people safely across the bay, including Victoria Wood, Melvyn Bragg (whom he liked despite “all the long words”), Rick Stein, whom he took fishing for flounder (“as good as fresh halibut”, Stein declared) and the Blue Peter dog.
The eight-mile crossing typically takes about three and a half hours on foot, and as safe routes change with great frequency, Robinson put careful preparation into each crossing.
The day before, he would try the terrain, testing the sands, checking the tides and marking the safest route with traditional laurel-branch markers known as “brobs” whose use was documented by Turner in a painting of Morecambe Bay cockle pickers in the 1770s.
Perceiving that the bay offered possibilities for fundraising, Robinson pioneered sponsored cross-bay walks which have become a popular means of raising money for charity, with thousands of people taking part in guided excursions each year and raising millions of pounds.
As a result he became something of a celebrity, a status he rather enjoyed: “I’m known world-wide on the internet,” he told an interviewer in 2003. “I don’t know much about that sort of thing myself, but we get letters from across the globe.”
A highlight was a visit in 1985 by the Duke of Edinburgh, whom Robinson accompanied on a cross-bay horsedrawn-carriage ride from Silverdale to Kents Bank – the first attempt in a century to drive horse-drawn carriages across the bay. “As we got to the end, crowds were cheering,” Robinson recalled. “Prince Philip told me to stand up as they were cheering for me. I thought that was nice.”
He went on to publish some nine books about the bay, including Between the Tides – The Perilous Beauty of Morecambe Bay, for which the prince wrote a foreword.
Such was Robinson’s dedication that he and his wife Olive never took holidays, bar a trip to Scarborough, though in 1999 they visited London when he was appointed MBE.
The couple led a frugal life, living on fresh fish and samphire, Robinson supplementing his meagre income as Queen’s Guide by continuing to fish and running a smallholding.
He lived to see the effect of overfishing and climate change, noting that from the time he left school, the number of fishermen working the bay had declined from 24 to two, while the rivers had become deeper and faster-flowing and the bay had become more dangerous with more quicksand – observations confirmed by climate researchers.
Robinson continued to keep up a good pace well into his eighties, but was reluctantly persuaded to retire in 2019, following a double hernia operation.
Michael Wilson, a local fisherman, took over his royal duties, though Robinson was allowed to go on living at Guide’s Cottage. Earlier this year he helped his successor escort a party of naturists across the sands – enjoying the view from the vantage point of a tractor.
As well as the MBE, he was awarded honorary fellowships by the University of Central Lancashire and Lancaster University, and had a local ale named after him.
His wife Olive, a former Miss Yorkshire, whom he married in 1961, died earlier this year. He is survived by their five children.