A line of walkers stride past lines of fishing nets to the shore after playing their part in a centuries-old tradition. Behind looms the grey shadow of the nuclear power station at Heysham - symbol of the future.

From a story by Richard Catlow, Pictures by Ron Rennell:
130 pairs of feet rhythmically squelch in wet mud. The sun beats down on 130 perspiring foreheads and on all sides hot air dances over the great curving banks of sand. Imagine a wet Sahara and that's Morecambe Bay. Walk across it and you have done something not far removed from walking on water. On Sunday, 14th June 1974, I joined an enthusiastic group of people, the young and the old, the fit and the (rather) fat, to make the crossing from Hest Bank, near Morecambe, to Grange-over-Sands with guides Cedric Robinson and Jim Lowther.

We gathered round Mr Robinson and set off. Ahead lay nine-and-a-half miles of walking across the double world of Morecambe Bay. Now a tawny expanse of sand, shortly before a glittering sheet of water. Slowly the bay swallows you up. The houses on the shore grow small and fade out of sight. Ahead there is sand, sand and yet more sand. After an hour's walk we reach the first river, the Keer, as it meanders between mudflats. We stop for a break on a dry reef of sand. Cedric Robinson tells me about life as a guide, a job he has been doing for 11 years. He was appointed in 1963 by the Duchy of Lancaster and takes parties across the sands most weekends during summer. For this he gets the princely sum of £13 per year and, a rather greater reward, tenancy of the Guides Farm, near Grange. It's a job which dates back centuries to the reign of King John, for the sands route was an important highway until the coming of the railways and the building of the Arnside Viaduct. For Cedric guiding is only a part-time job. He earns most of his money from fishing - he drives a tractor far out into the bay trawling for shrimps.

Continuing after the break we are walking parallel to a great arm of water, an old course of the River Kent. Every few yards we dip sharply into the gullies which run into it. On we walk until we reach the channel of the River Kent, the most difficult point of the crossing. We splash into the shallows, the way marked by branches of laurel, known as brobs, which are placed at intervals in the sand. Ahead the main stream, a rippling expanse of brown water. Soon though we were safely tramping to the shore. Ahead lay Grange and a welcoming cup of tea. The party split to make their way to their cars but I decided, with guide Jim Lowther, that there was really only one way to return - across the sands. We made record speed, we had to, for the murmur of onrushing water warned that the tide had started to sweep back over the bay.