Channel Shore: From the White Cliffs to Land's End

by Tom Fort

The English Channel is the busiest waterway in the world. Ferries steam back and forth, trains thunder through the tunnel. The narrow sea has been crucial to our development and prosperity. It helps define our notion of Englishness, as an island people, a nation of seafarers. It is also our nearest, dearest playground where people have sought sun, sin and bracing breezes. Tom Fort takes us on a fascinating, discursive journey from east to west, to find out what this stretch of water means to us and what is so special about the English seaside, that edge between land and seawater. He dips his toe into Sandgate's waters, takes the air in Hastings and Bexhill, chews whelks in Brighton, builds a sandcastle in Sandbanks, sunbathes in sunny Sidmouth, catches prawns off the slipway at Salcombe and hunts a shark off Looe. Stories of smugglers and shipwreck robbers, of beachcombers and samphire gatherers, gold diggers and fossil hunters abound.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, British Literature, History

448 pages, Hardcover

First published May 7, 2015

About the author

Tom Fort was education at Eton and Balliol Collge, Oxford. On leaving Oxford he went to work as a reporter at the Slough Observer and the Slough Evening Mail before joining the BBC in 1978 where he worked in the BBC Radio newsroom in London for 22 years.

He took early retirement in 2000, just before the publication of his social history of lawns and lawn-mowing, The Grass is Greener.

Reviews

[Bettie · Rating 4 out of 5]

BOTW

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05vw...

Description: Tom Fort's maritime journey, abridged by Katrin Williams, takes us from the White Cliffs to Lands' End. About 675 miles in all..

1. Where exactly do the North Sea and the English Channel merge,
and what did Noel Coward get up to at St. Margaret's?

2. Wandering the 'shabby end' of the Royal Parade in Eastbourne, which
houses the fishing fleet, the author is reminded of his own fishing exploits.
This involved prawn - hunting..

3. Once upon a time on Cogden Beach near Chesil, 'a mermaid was thrown up by the sea, thirteen feet long'.

4. At Slapton Ley there are musings on Pallas sand grouse, ship-wrecks,
and 'Cornish sardines' - whose numbers turned the water black from
Lands' End to Bigbury bay.

5. The Looes. Then Lizard Point. Then Land's End, where a cream tea is enjoyed, but the place itself?

Reader Jonathan Coy

[Penny · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5
I quite liked this book in the main, but it could have been a whole lot better.

The idea is very promising - a journey along the Channel Shore from east to west, mainly by bicycle. This way Fort feels he can really get to grips with the places he passes through, giving us some local and social history, making conversation with the locals and just generally commenting on what he sees and feels.

However, it didn't take me long to get thoroughly fed up with Fort's constant snipes and gripes about the National Trust. Whilst I don't consider it the most perfect of organisations maybe Fort should remember that if it didn't exist he wouldn't have been able to travel along a fraction of the coast he so easily (and freely) accessed.

Instead he'd have been confronted with either constant housing conurbations or 'Private, Keep Out' signs. We are extremely fortune that so much of our coastline, not just along the Channel Shore, is protected by the NT for us all to enjoy.

His description of what he considers the characteristics of a National Trust Volunteer was nothing but a lazy stereotype - and verged on being just plain offensive although no doubt it was supposed to be amusing. It wasn't.

There were lots of black and white photographs in the book but they were small and often taken from high above, meaning that basically it could have been a bit of sea and sand and a few boats almost anywhere!

[The Book Queen · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I read non-fiction, I'd like it to feel like I'm reading a story. I have no interest in reading a wall of information, but if the subject matter comes to life, if the people and places explored are as exciting and thought-provoking as they should be in a novel, if the writing flows smoothly, then for me, non-fiction is perfectly enjoyable - because it feels like it isn't non-fiction at all.

This book is not like that. This book is non-fiction at its worst: facts and dates recited monotonously in an endless rinse-and-repeat formula that looks a little like this:
1. Discuss the history of the town/village/house.
2. Gripe about property developers who ruin everything (true, but is it really necessary to complain about them at every single place he visits?)
3. Discuss the uselessness of the local council.
4. Complain about the National Trust.
5. And repeat, on and on, for the entire book.

See why I gave it two stars? It's dull. So incredibly dull.

Once it got into Devon it was a little more interesting, but that doesn't really make up for 250 pages of extreme boredom. 2.5 stars.

[Louise Culmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

quite enjoyable account of a cycling trip along the Channel coast. Tom Fort gives lots of interesting information about the placed he visits and the notable people who lived in them. Some places he is a little unfair to - there is much crticism of Dover and Folkestone for instance, but no mention of for instance Dover's entrancing museum, with the stunning bronze age boat, or Folkestone's attractive harbour with its fishing boats and abundance of fresh, cheap fish for sale. It can get a little monotonous at times, since a lot of south coast resorts suffer from the same problems - too much reliance on tourism, not enough employment out of season, too many holiday homes etc. and one demolished pier or winter garden after another. He is also a bit insistent on describing this or that personality as 'forgotten' - I looked up one of the people he insisted was forgotten on google and found numerous references, dozens of photos, and at least two biographies - perhaps not so forgotten after all. on the other hand, while in Torquay there is not one mention of the woman who surely must have been Torquay's most famous resident - Agatha Christie. Perhaps she isn't forgotten enough to rate a mention.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

From BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week:
Tom Fort's maritime journey, abridged by Katrin Williams, takes us from
the White Cliffs to Lands' End. About 675 miles in all..

1. Where exactly do the North Sea and the English Channel merge,
and what did Noel Coward get up to at St. Margaret's?

Reader Jonathan Coy

[CadyCan · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s not so much that the book is unfinishable but more that it is no longer relevant. Began reading to learn more about the English coastline in our search for a coastal home. We’ve found that home so having gotten to page 160ish which was more or less as far as Bournemouth, I’m going to skip ahead to the bit about Cornwall because that’s where we’ve bought, assuming it all goes thru 🤞🙏 and then I’ll return it to Sally who kindly leant it to me in the first place.

[Steve Chilton · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read, on a big subject - thus you may feel there are geographical omissions, despite its 400 pages. If you've read Fort's excellent A303 book, you'll know what to expect. I felt that perhaps he should have offered less about the places he visited but given more about the journey itself, and the people he meet.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Radio BBC

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good holiday read.

[Bert Bruins · Rating 4 out of 5]

After an earlier book on the A303 trunk road, which I haven't read, Tom Fort here undertakes the admirable task of writing about the whole length of England's Channel shore. Now to this exhaustively would take a Pevsner-like dedication and would probably be equally boring. Fort decides to try and cover much but also to leave out much, and that's understandable. The focus is firmly on coastal towns and villages from the late 18th Century onward. Earlier history barely features. Larger cities and towns up estuaries (Southampton, Falmouth) are left out, whereas fairly random anecdotes get ample coverage. So I found out where Dorothy L Sayers secretly had a baby, and where Ian Fleming had a coastal pad etc.
Fort chose to visit a good part of this coastline by bicycle, which seems like a good compromise between car visits and home research on the one hand, and walking the whole coastline on foot on the other. However, as roads generally don't follow the coast strictly, Fort misses quite a lot of the actual coast, by necessity focusing on the towns he rolls into.
The first half of the book reads a bit like: Fishing village becomes gentle folks resort, has golden period, goes into decline and acquires a mobile home caravan site for the working classes (repeat over and over). This gets dull after a while. It feels like Fort is more excited (as am I) by the western half of the journey (Dorset, Devon, Cornwall) which has more variation,more tall tales and more gruesome shipwrecks.
This book is informative more than it is entertaining (Bill Bryson is more humorous), thorough yet incomplete. This left me with a question of what or who the book is for: too serious for the light reader, not in-depth enough for the serious student, who's left?

[Mind the Book · Rating 2 out of 5]

I grund och botten en bra bokidé, men innehåller för mycket - och för tråkig - information för att läsas från början till slut och för lite information för att utgöra någon som helst guide till de olika kustorterna. Fyra år tog det för mig att läsa färdigt.

En bra grej är att boken inte blundar för de mörka sidorna, såsom avfolkningsproblematik eller socioekonomiska faktorer bakom ett visst förfall - eller omvänt. T.ex. Folkestone (som jag gillar!) anklagas för att the Creative Quarter knappast utstrålar energi och innovation, när var och varannan lokal faktiskt står tom, och dessutom är det ett faktum att strandremsan pryds av ett "seafront wasteland". Båda sakerna stämmer, men man känner ju ömhet. Dessutom kan man skåda Frankrike på andra sidan; det betyder mycket.

Och om du någonsin befinner dig i Folkestone... https://www.creativefolkestone.org.uk...

Andra kustfavoriter, från väst till öst, samma sträcka som boken täcker: Fowey, Polperro, Lyme Regis, Portland, St Leonards-on-Sea, Rye & Camber Sands och sedan i fredags, Southsea.

[Christopher Dove · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a delightful book. It recounts a journey taken by Tom Fort along the south coast of England, from Dover to Land's End. The journey is done by bicycle and this leisurely pace is reflected in the relaxed feel of the book. He recounts stories of individuals associated with many of the places he visits as well key incidents and events. Some of the facts he turns up are quite suprising. For instance I never realised that in the 17th Century many Cornish fishermen were victims of Barbary pirates and sold into slavery - 'It's estimated that between 1580 and 1680 as many as a million Europeans were enslaved in North Africa, the great majority from fishing communities too poor to pay ransoms.'
I prefereed the first half of the book, but this is simply because, being a Londoner, many of the places at the eastern end of the South Coast I have visited on day trips. So I have many happy memories of places like Hastings, Eastbourne and Brighton. My one criticism of the book is the quality of the photographs. They are all distant aerial shots in various shades of grey. None of the photos convey a sense of place. But that is my only gripe and I can happily recommend this book.

[Stoic_quin]

This is dull crap from start to finish. It’s like Bill Bryson gone senile, dosed with a combination of sedatives, added in with some righteous twaddle (this arse is a holier than thou cyclist) and then given a ‘Mitchell & webb’ sneer without any of the redeeming features. A putrid pile of bollocks that reads like the author did a Wikipedia search before combining with his failed humour , somehow creating something that even on a train I couldn’t move in for three hours, staring into the brain dead eyes of the fellow travellers was a preferable alternative.

[Brian Gowthorpe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite entertaining. As usual Tom Fort has unearthed many entertaining tales and a cycle journey is a good way to explore. Our south coast has long been used for trade, for fishing, for tourism and for retirement. All the same, there is less research than in his thoughtful book Village News and less analysis overall. Perhaps, geology aside, there is just a bit too much the same in exploring one not very inspiring south coast place after another.

[Colin Scott-Morton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've previously read - and enjoyed - Tom Fort's earlier book on the A303, and this is in similar vein. Fort is an entertaining and descriptive writer, and you feel as if you're making the journey with him. The narrative has a nicely balanced mix of encounters with people he meets along the way, and informative historical references, peppered with his own - sometimes wry - observations. Highly recommended.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very frank and honest travel guide. Having visited a lot of the places in this book I loved getting the opinion of someone else on these places. I found I agreed with a lot of his “findings” but there were 1 or 2 I did disagree with.
Very informative without just being a wall of information thrown at you.

[Nick Lewis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mildly interesting when you know the place visited, otherwise the book seemed to go on forever. Lots of almost interesting facts about almost interesting places that didn't raise enough excitement in me to be bothered about.

[Chrissy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bit ploddy and dull for me. Was hoping for more on the beauty of landscapes and for the history parts to be somehow snappier and more interesting. Maybe it was just a bad week for me when I read this.

[Daniel Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly interesting book with lots of facts about the places he visited.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside and this book is an excellent companion. It may help if you know the places as the pictures are tripe. Free was still too high a price for them.

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Of some interest if you know the coast well. Lots of information about little know characters, and of little interest.

[Ipswichblade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book about the coast from Dover to Lands End. Tom Fort always seems to make sure you learn something new. I have walked some of this coast which also makes the book come to life

[Catherine Maloney · Rating 3 out of 5]

A less conventional guide to exploring the SW coastal path.

[Andy Gore · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating read.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lucky three for this but only just.

[SophieJaneK · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting points and at least he apologised for what he said about the National Trust !!

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Through Kent, Sussex and Hampshire this book reads like a list of towns and how bad each one is due to the presence of visitor centres, civic leaders, town planners and officialdom in general. The things that go to lessen the badness of each place, in the eyes of the author, are less officialdom and specifically fishing, beer, cycling, fishing, the absence of town planning and er... oh yes, fishing.

However as the author moves further through Dorset and Devon and into Cornwall there is a greater emphasis on historical events and facts (many tied up one way or another with fishing) and these are generally well told in an amusing manner.

So stick with it, go west, and things gets better.

About Pentewan: "..its past seems somehow richer and more colourful than its present."... "The harbour died, fishing diminished to almost nothing, farming much the same. Tourism came and thrived and swallowed up everything.“

[Daren Kearl · Rating 3 out of 5]

A journey by the author along the shoreline from Dover to Lands End. The scenario for each place visited quickly became very similar and predictable: decrying the poor town planning; a titbit of cultural heritage; a chat to a local about what they thought of the place; a tale of a colourful character or incident.
Tom also seems to judge places on whether they have a second hand bookshop!
The general message I took from the book was looking out to sea was meditative and calming, compared to looking from the sea to where mankind has spoilt the land. We can add a few wind turbines and trawl out the fish stocks but essentially the sea is beyond our ability to conquer, which makes it the more appealing.

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I decided to read this book as I love reading about places around our little island. Some I've been to, many I haven't, I'm just interested in the stories and history of these places. This journey takes us along the channel, from Kent right down to Devon and Cornwall. I know some of the towns and places en route, so was looking forward to reading about them. It was an interesting book but to be honest I didn't find some of the stories enjoyable - some were interesting little facts, some were a bit boring.

Saying that, It was lovely to take a journey round the coast picturing the places I'd been to, and for the places I hadn't I looked them up on google maps!

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was irritated by the extremely poor quality of the photographs, which may as well not have been there for the value they added to the book.

It felt more like a travel guide than an interesting read. I enjoyed reading about the sections I knew or was about to visit, but the narrative wasn't interesting enough for me to read about the other sections that I neither knew nor was about to visit.