Hanging off the tip of the Furness Peninsula in Cumbria, and including Walney and the Victorian industrial settlement of Vickerstown within the town of Barrow-in-Furness, Walney Island is an interesting place. Eleven miles long and one mile wide, it is the
8th largest island in England, but often gets overlooked as a suburb of a town which is more famous for building submarines than it is for wildlife and nature.
Despite the rather bland settlements in the middle of the island, the southern end boasts a bird observatory and Cumbria Wildlife Trust nature reserve with views east across Morecambe Bay and to Piel Island and Sheep Island, and a distinctive lighthouse. At the northern end is another nature reserve with sand dunes, salt marsh, popular with wading birds and Natterjack Toads.
For more, see
http://www.walney-island.com/
^Picture © Alexander Baxevanis used under a Creative Commons license^
8th largest in the UK? I can think of at least twice as many larger islands in Scotland!
ReplyDeleteI see from the Walney Island website it's the 8th biggest in England. On the other hand they say it's the biggest connected to the mainland by road. I would have thought Sheppey was bigger.
Sorry about that. It did say somewhere that it was the 8th largest in the UK when I wrote this late at night but I agree it seems like that's probably not true. Corrected.
ReplyDelete