Don't mess with the sea!

NiCkNaMe

NiCkNaMe

NiCkNaMe

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Nearly got in a pretty bad situation tonight.

Didn't have much to do, so went out on a drive with a few mates from stoke to morcombe to get a kebab (lol).

Anyway, dossed around for a bit after getting there and decided to drop down to sunderland (not the real one :o) as it looked like it went fairly close to the sea, and we wanted to drive around the coast rather than through the town.

As we got nearer, the roads became more countryside style and we ended up going through the town of overten. Now to reach sunderland (so my mate reckoned anyway) you had to go through a road that's about 1 1/2 mile long...

Pic showing the route we attempted to take;

mor.JPG


We drove down and onto the road, and it looked pretty bleak. Drove for 30 seconds, and came to what looked like a bridge with a fork, obvious you had to go straight over it, not to turn if you wanted to reach sunderland point.

Anyway, there was a sign saying if you couldn't see the bottom of the poles holding the sign up then not to proceed due to tides and flooding.

We could see em (was raining a bit, so just looked a bit marshy around it!) and the road ahead looked OK. Few puddles, but like I said it was raining and we felt like dying! (joking in case fox comes in here)

So off we go. Was going fine for a while, was taking it easy as the roads are narrow and you could see the trenches and marsh by the sides. Few puddles here and there, but looked ok.. and after a bit you could see lights that looked like sundahland. (Only 1 1/2 mile road, but was foggy) Great! or not! We screeeeched to a stop, what looked like lake michigan was in front of us. We were not passing that :(

Oh well, try to turn around (hard feat considering it was foggy and narrow road) but couldn't... so thought I'l reverse, will only take 5/10 mins max to get back onto a main style road. Reversing was a peetake, rear lights don't give off much :o so decided to do a 55 point turn. (Very lucky...)

Just about to start the turn, and looked in front of me to see a puddle turning into a lake (thought it was a transformer I reckon??? lol) and coming towards us. Managed to keep it calm and do the turn (never turned so fast in my life) The puddle was still gaining on us, so we cained it. But wait, its coming the other way as well!

It was at this point one of my mates crapped everyone up by mentioning the chinese cockle pickers (rip :().. great. I managed to keep to the road, it wasn't that deep yet and went at considerable speed, which was lucky as we got within about 200m of the original bridge when I saw it looked pretty deep... 2ft and about 10-15m across. Cained the car through it with relative ease... but then there was another... thought **** this and blasted through it, everyone was pretty nervous. Car was on the verge of cutting out, was 1/4 of the way up the doors! but it got through and the final mini lake was easy. Reached the other side and saw the sign warning to not enter half submerged! But we were safe now. Razzed it up the last bit and through the cattle thing and onto a 'normal road'

Pure adreniline, and yes I/We should have known better... but not living by the sea I guess you don't realise its immense power and speed. I think we'd of really struggled had I attempted to reverse all the way back and pretty sure we'd of never of made it through the final mini lakes, they would have been way to deep!

Ah well, fun !!! But thinking back I realise how close we were to some serious trouble!

Sorry for the long post.
 
SiriusB said:
You never said if you got that kebab.
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Nope! Morcombe has a distinct lack of kebab houses (that we could see anyway!)

Settled for a calming cappucino and muffin at some services on the way back down the M6. :cool:
 
So you went through all that fear, the panic, the unsuccessful test of your SubmarineCar and the humiliation of letting all of OcUK know about it... and you didn't even get a kebab?

Bloody waste of time that was.
 
Lol... you tried getting to Sunderland Point when the tide was coming in?! *chuckles with his local knowledge*. Oh well, you're definitely not the first :D Glad you're all okay though.
 
jesus christ i was ******* myself just reading that!! you guys musta been laying bricks....I bet you won't drive on a road like that again!
 
lol I wouldn't be attempting that if the tide was incoming. When the tide is going out though it is a nice quiet place to go for a walk. Should've stopped off in Lancaster on your way back, there's a few kebab shops there and would've made the trip worthwhile :)
 
When I was in the Gower peninsula in Wales (some of you must have been there - very famous), I had a walk with my mates to Worm's Head, which is a basically a long piece of rock that sticks out for about three miles from Rhossili beach. If you want to get to it (it's quite a nice challenging hike), you have to cross a causeway. You have about three hours either side of low tide to get over it, after that, even if the causeway is only a couple of feet submerged (it submerges very quickly once the tide turns), a riptide will drag you out into the sea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Worm's_Head_(Rhossili).jpg

We saw as we approached Worm's Head that the tide was coming in pretty quickly, so we just sat with a few beers and watched it. As we did, we saw a guy and his young daughter stranded on the other side of the causeway - if this happens, the only safe thing to do is to wait a few hours until the causeway becomes exposed again. He tried to get across, despite us and forty other people shouting at him to stay put. Him and his daughter were both dragged out into the sea.

Luckily, as soon as he stepped foot into the water someone called the coastguard, who was brilliant and had the boat to them within five minutes. Darwin Award candidate there, but yes, moral is, don't mess with the sea :)
 
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lol, many a person has come a cropper down there.
The signs saying "Road liable to Flooding" tend to be a good indicator, but then again being dark and raining doesnt help.
Not far from there is a pub, which is isolated when the tides in. Its where all the jetskiers tend to launch from when playing on the lune.

First question i have to ask is "why o why did you want to visit morecambe" in the first place? Its a dive. I do my best to drive round it on the way to work.

Where i used to work, one of the company cars had it engines written off by some one taking a short cut to overton, the engine got full of sea water and went "pop"

As for kebabs, your best bet would have been to go to Gizmo's pizza in the west end, they do kebabs, but the pizza's are awesome.
 
MasterMike said:
We saw as we approached Worm's Head that the tide was coming in pretty quickly, so we just sat with a few beers and watched it. As we did, we saw a guy and his young daughter stranded on the other side of the causeway - if this happens, the only safe thing to do is to wait a few hours until the causeway becomes exposed again. He tried to get across, despite us and forty other people shouting at him to stay put. Him and his daughter were both dragged out into the sea.
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Can't believe someone would be stupid enough to try and get back across with his daughter with him. Idiot. :(

OP, sounds like you had quite an adventure mate. Fun fun. :p
 
clv101 said:
Good story! What car do you drive?
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Only a 1.4 306, but its cracking fun in the country :)

Was pretty late by the time we'd got outta there, and it was a hour and a half drive back so wanted to get on our way (I had to be up at 6.30 for work! :p)

Don't ask why we visited morcombe! One of my mates said it was a seaside resort, and we've done everywhere else on late night drives... but yeah it is a bit crappy (no offence if anyone lives there)

Funnily enough I read about worms head last night! was doing a bit of searching for tidal problems in areas. One of my mates been shell island, similar thing happens there.

Was deffo fun and scary - one of those things you look back on with a big smile on yer face lol. Been in some right situations in my car, but that ranks up high. (Got stuck in a 6ft (again don't ask why we were there :rolleyes: )snow drift up in the welsh mountains for 4 hours - we had to physically lift my car up, was crazy as it was very nearly dark and we were about 20 miles from any sort of civilisation -- one of my mates rung the police but we made him put it down)
 
Its spelt MORECAMBE!!
You are very lucky mate, the morecambe bay tide is lethal, it comes in very fast and unfortunatley has claimed many victims, including the chinese cockle pickers.

If you wanted to get close to the sea you should have carried on up to Walney Island off Barrow-in-Furness, not much to do there but its got a great pebble beach (I was up there yesterday and the waves crashing onto the beach were huge!!)
 
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BigB@dJ@y said:
Its spelt MORECAMBE!!
You are very lucky mate, the morecambe bay tide is lethal, it comes in very fast and unfortunatley has claimed many victims, including the chinese cockle pickers.
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He speaketh the truth.
If you go over to Grange, you can hear the tide as it comes in, due to the bay being so flat. Makes a "hissing noise".
Arnside has/had a siren that sounds on the incoming tide.
There was a cross bay windsurfing competition many many moons ago. Due to problems with getting it started and what ever, they set off to late and caught the outgoing tide.
130 set off, 90 or so made it across, the rest got caught and dragged out with the tide. The life boat and support boats were kept busy for a while.

One day i'll do a cross bay walk that starts at Hest Bank.
 
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