Channel Shore

From the White Cliffs to Land's End

Tom Fort

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN:
  9781471129742
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Travel

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Also by Tom Fort
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Contents
• Maps
• Preface
• 1. Dover Port
• 2. A Mere Ditch
• 3. Dungie
• 4. Concrete King
• 5. Empress of Watering Holes
• 6. Stand Up for Peacehaven
• 7. Prawns Ancient and Modern
• 8. Bugger Bognor?
• 9. Did Jesus Come to Hayling Island?
• 10. Wight
• 11. Peace and Love
• 12. Savage Coast
• 13. Black Oil, White Nothe
• 14. Half-Cock
• 15. Keeping the Riffraff Out
• 16. Gulls and Grockles
• 17. Mine Goot People
• 18. Coots and Crabs
• 19. Points, Heads and Tails
• 20. Hue and Cry
• 21. Two Looes
• 22. Skull of Doom
• 23. The Trail of the Sea Monster
• 24. Gabbro and Serpentine
• 25. Lizard Tales
• 26. Legends of Mount’s Bay
• 27. A Different Place
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgements
• Index