Lunchtime today and I’m sat outside my favourite coffee spot on Glasson Dock. The little shop next to the café on the far side of the port, away from the motorbikes’ haunt – not that I have anything against motorcyclists. Here is where the dockworkers come for a takeaway bite to eat, a coffee and a chat. I get into conversation with a local, years past are shared, and I gain some interesting information about the previous workings of the port here. A bit of local scandal is thrown in and his views on the nearby pub couldn’t be repeated.

Once my delicious cheese and onion slice is finished I go off to find the little ‘smoke house’ on the docks, a family run business producing traditional smoked and cured fish and meats. The Port of Lancaster Smokehouse   The sign suggested the staff were chain-smoking cigarettes around the back.

I come away with some smoked salmon for friends I visit later in the day and some potted Morecambe Bay Shrimps which I’ve just enjoyed with some toast. I can remember years ago a cottage in the old village of Heysham that sold potted shrimps in small pottery pots from their front doorstep. The husband did the shrimping with a push net at low tide and his wife boiled and peeled before potting them in her butter and spice recipe. A dying trade.  Tonight mine, even if they came in a plastic pot, were delicious, I should have asked where they were caught.

I was glad to get through to Glasson on the Lancashire Cycleway after two recent failed attempts due to impassable flooding. Today the abandoned rail track was still damp and the ditches full either side, but I had cycled on with no problems to reach the port. Mission accomplished.