The Shifting Sands

Low Tide in Arnside, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

The silt that shifts around in the Bay with the ebb and flow of every tide is largely alluvium left from the glacial erosion of the Lakeland Hills. The artist Turner, who visited the area on his tours in 1816 and 1825, observed to his companions as he crossed the sands 'Look at Morecambe Bay when the tide is out and you are looking at the mountains and hills brought low'.
One of my small pleasures in life is watching the channel of the River Kent change course after every tide on my way to work, but I am at a loss as to why a similar channel in the Thames Estuary that runs past the cockle sheds in Leigh on sea has never changed in the forty five years I have known it.
It is probably to do with the power of the tidal flow in the Bay and the nature of the sand that shapes it.
A research grant and a five year longitudinal study should sort it out.