Rating: 3 out of 5

All travel writers are not the same. Some are humorous, poking fun at places and people. Some are very serious, explaining facts at every turn. And some are observers. For me, Paul Theroux is the latter. I haven’t come away with any new, great insights into the coast of the UK. I have made a couple of notes of coastlines to visit - mainly in Scotland. I love the sea, and there are portions of the UK coastline that I already love too - Gower, Pembrokeshire, Yorkshire - and in the back of my mind I’ve always quite liked the idea of a coastal tour, so I’m disappointed by the mundane element of this book. But, to be honest, how can it be anything else? As he says towards the end “There was always an Esplanade, and always a Bandstand on it; always a War Memorial and a Rose Garden and a bench bearing a small stained plaque that said, To the memory of Arthur Wetherup. There was always a Lifeboat Station and a Lighthouse and a Pier; a Putting Green, a Bowling Green, a Cricket Pitch, a Boating Lake and a church the guidebook said was Perpendicular.”

I’d wanted to be inspired and amazed and discover lots of new coastlines to spend time in, and instead I’ve read about the impact of the closure of rail lines, about how the UK is returning to pre-railways pockets where there is no longer rail transport to link smaller, rural communities to the bigger towns, were buses are unreliable and the car is king (but possibly too expensive to run for people with little opportunity to earn a decent wage). I guess I’ve been made to think which is never such a bad thing.

And he does find one place he’d like to revisit, the Isle of Skye, about which he says “I had seen so much on the British coast that I never wanted to see again that it was a surprise and a pleasure to find a place I wished to return to. It gave me hope, because I knew I would not come back alone. I wanted to come here again with someone I loved and say ‘Look’”

Originally posted to my Goodreads account