CHARNEY HALL Cedric Robinson - Queen’s Guide to the Sands
As I lent backwards, launching myself with my head tilted back into the clear filtered sea water, a calm voice urged me to raise my legs and arch my back….but to no avail! My attempt to float once more ended in abject failure as my feet sank deeper and deeper into the depths of Grange Lido swimming pool.
Grange Lido in its heyday
The bronzed be-Speedoed pool attendant who helped many boys to swim for the first time was our 21 year old swimming instructor. Fresh out of National Service he kept a professional eye on us as the fortunate majority crawled, breaststroked and backstroked up and down between the painted lane lines in the pool. Standing bolt upright on the pool side he looked to us like Charles Atlas, the American body builder, the inventor of Dynamic-Tension who once promised to turn a 97 pound weakling into Adonis.
He gave me words of encouragement as he described to the small group of non-swimmers the intricacies of the breaststroke. We stood, waist deep and shivering in the pool, (sometimes as warm as 57F!), arms outstretched, hands, palms together, practicing the upper-body movements. Then clutching the white ceramic overflow, which lined the perimeter of the pool, we attempted the symmetrical locomotion of the legs. For me combining the two was a nightmare as when it came to committing instead of pretending to swim, no matter how hard I tried, I sank like a brick! I left Charney Hall aged 13 being able to swim 4 or 5 strokes……underwater! My excuse for this feeble performance was that my thin frame, like the young Charles Atlas, did not have sufficient buoyancy, even in salt water!
Years later, having overcome the embarrassment of being a non-swimmer, when reading about the charity walks across Morecambe Bay involving up to 500 people, I saw a photograph of the Queen’s Guide to the Sands, one Cedric Robinson. The face though much older looked strangely familiar and it was no more than a few seconds before I realised that the swimming instructor, all those years ago, was indeed a very much younger Cedric.
Walkers in their hundreds following Cedric Robinson across the Bay
Instantly I remembered one day in the Lido when, after the sounding of the siren heralding the imminent arrival of the tidal bore up the channel, there was a commotion in the pool as someone had spotted a couple on the Sands on the far side of the River Kent estuary. We had all rushed onto the sea wall of the Lido wondering what was to become of the walkers when we spotted fearless Cedric crossing the estuary to their rescue. In no time he had led them back to the safety of the foreshore and the promenade.
If you have read my post ‘Charney Hall Morecambe Bay’* you will be aware of how close to disaster those people had come. I’m not entirely sure whether they ever realised what a life-threatening situation had been averted.
Cedric Robinson was born in the small village of Flookburgh, the son and grandson of fishermen. He recalls that in his grandfather’s day, around the turn of the C20, 100 horses and carts would follow each other, down the straight mile of Moor Lane, to ‘follow the Sands’. In his day the number had been reduced to around 20. By then the evolution of the wheel had turned and tractors had replaced horses, powered by diesel instead of horse power.
Note the immense complexity of the river channels, dykes and sand banks requiring an intimate knowledge of the Bay and its tides.
Now 88 and retired from the huge responsibility of leading groups of walkers across those treacherous Sands he lives in nearby Grange-over-Sands. He held the appointment of Queens Guide to the Sands in 1963 for a magnificent 56 years!
References:
*https://charneyhall.blogspot.com/2021/08/charney-hall-morecambe-bay.html
https://www.timetravel-britain.com/articles/country/sandwalker.shtml
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedric_Robinson_(guide)
https://www.recordingmorecambebay.org.uk/content/catalogue_item/cedric-robinson
A 2 part amusing voice recording of Cedric’s memories of the life of Flookburgh fishermen and their families.
https://invisibleflock.com/portfolio/sandpilot/
https://earth.app.goo.gl/pzdKz5
In Cedric’s day the mudflats extended to the end of Moor Lane. Now salt marshes reach far out into the Bay.
Credits : Google Earth. Photographer: Steven Ryan
Grange Lido
https://www.savegrangelido.co.uk/history/
Charles Atlas
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/charles-atlas-muscle-man-
3462692https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Atlas
Footnote: Cedric Robinson died on 19th November 2021. He was 88 years old and had retired as Guide to the Sands in 2019. An amazing man who will be both missed, remembered and celebrated for many years to come.
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