EVEN Monday’s rail strike was not enough to tempt commuters to try the old way of getting to work – walking across the Morecambe Bay Sands.

There were roads and tracks leading to well used crossing points – including Kent’s Bank and Canal Foot at Ulverston.

Regular coach services left the Sun Hotel at Ulverston for passengers wanting the quicker and more direct route – in the days before the railways made travel quicker and safer.

An auction in Berlin on March 31 by Jeschke, Van Vliet expects £650 for an oil painting showing people making the hazardous sands crossing.

It is the work of William Fowden Hindle, of Blackburn, and is dated 1876.

Railway viaducts had crossed the Duddon at Foxfield, the Leven, near Ulverston and the Kent at Arnside by the 1850s – leading to a fall off in numbers of travellers on the Morecambe Bay and Duddon sands.

A Victorian officer’s blue cloth helmet of the King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regiment is among items in the March 23 sale by Peterborough-based auctioneers William George.

The helmet was made by Hawks of London and is expected to sell for £750 to £1,000.

The April 1 sale at Pershore, Worcestershire, by G. W. Railwayana Auctions had a two-part enamel name board for Oxenholme station in the Lake District, where passengers change trains for the branch line to Windermere.

An unused Victorian cheque from the Ulverston branch of the Lancaster Banking Company should make £15 to £20 in the March 27 sale by James and Sons at Fakenham, Norfolk.

A 19 th century cabinet plate by Coalport with a central design of Windermere should make £40 to £50 in the March 21 sale by Keys Fine Art Auctioneers at Aylsham, Norwich.

A letter by Victorian artist and critic John Ruskin, on his headed note paper from Brantwood, Coniston, is expected to sell for £500 to £800 in today’s sale by Ryedale Auctioneers at Kirkbymoorside, York.

A vintage wine bottle with a seal bearing the wording “J. Whitwell, Kendal, 1805” should make £300 to £400 in the March 24 sale at Leyburn, North Yorkshire by Tennants.

It is being sold with a second bottle with a crowned boar emblem on the seal.

The March 21 sale by Anderson and Garland, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, includes an oil painting called Old Mill, Ambleside, by Turner Taylor.

It is dated 1886 and should sell for £120 to £180.