Gogarty - The Coast Road: a 3,000 Mile Journey Round the Edge of England

www.anovabooks.com

The Coast Road - A 3,000-Mile Journey Round the Edge of England is Paul Gogartys second English travelogue. The first, The Water Road A Narrowboat Odyssey Through England is also available from Portico Books

Praise for The Water Road:

Gogarty has a sharp eye for character and his warm-hearted book proves a triumph of the romantic spirit, a labour of love among the slow-moving, quick-witted narrow-boaters of England. This world is evoked with wit and a wealth of lively anecdotage by a writer who is always good company.

Roger Deakin, Daily Telegraph

Paul Gogarty manages brilliantly to convey a boatmans total euphoria in his delightful account of a four-month narrowboat idyll spent pootling along the 900 miles of central Englands inland waterways known as the Cut his enthusiasm bounces off every page and I was completely mesmerised.

Val Hennessy, Critics Choice in the Daily Mail

entertaining, informative and thought-provoking The book is a classic.

Margaret Cornish, Waterways World

His tale is a compelling contrast of light and shade populated by a peculiar cast of characters of almost Dickensian eccentricity.

Morgan Falconer, Ham & High Express

Since Rolt, it would be reasonably true to say that there has been no one who has written a successful account of a voyage round canals which has captured their essence, recorded the lives of those on the Cut and Bank and seized the popular imagination. But all this could change with the publication of Paul Gogartys The Water Road It is Gogartys ability to write intimately with no holds barred about all he sees and meets that makes the book a fascinating read.

Tim Coghlan, Canal & Riverboat

Published in the United Kingdom by
Portico Books
10 Southcombe Street
London
W14 0RA

An imprint of Anova Books Company Ltd

Copyright Paul Gogarty 2004, 2011

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

First eBook publication 2013
eBook ISBN 9781909396135

Also available as a paperback
Paperback ISBN 9781905798094

This book can be ordered direct from the publisher at
www.anovabooks.com

To my parents Pat and Joan Gogarty and to my sister Lynn and brother Patrick.

Im grateful to all the characters that appear in the book and made the journey what it was. Thanks too to Swift for providing me with my most reliable steed, the Sundance G306. Visitengland and the British Holiday & Home Parks Association provided me with invaluable assistance during the trip, as did many local councils, tourist boards and tourist information centres. Penny Johns at South Hams, Mike Chadwick in Blackpool, Joan Turnbull in Northumberland and Peter Joyner in North Norfolk are deserving of particularly large drinks in this respect. Thanks to my agent Laura Susijn and to both Susanna Abse and Nick Crane for reading the manuscript and offering sound advice.

The list of other individuals Im indebted to is long, and no doubt should be longer (to those missing I can only plead senility as defence): Trudi Dunlop, Emily Grubb and Helen Coop at Bronwyn Gold Blyth and Associates; Helen Morley of the White Agency; Andy Pietrasik at the Guardian; Nigel Richardson of the Daily Telegraph; Jo Roberts for Margate Voices; Roy and Tina Dunlop at Hyde; Phil Wyburne Browne, Senior Custodian at Dover Castle; Mel Wrigley of White Cliffs Countryside Project; Simon Ovenden at White Cliffs National Trust; Julian Browne at Readers Digest for the copy of the irreplaceable, sadly out of print, Illustrated Guide to Britains Coast; Nick Ewbank at Folkestones Metropole Gallery; Art Hewitt and Simon Bolton at Strange Cargo; Owen Leyshon at Romney Marsh Countryside Project; the Walpole Bay Hotel; Julie Larner at Migrant Helpline; Glenda Clarke of Brighton Walks; Richard Baker at Brightons Grand Hotel; Mick McCorley at the Salvation Army in Gosport and Alan Smith for finding my camera; George Malcolmson at Gosport Royal Navy Submarine Museum; Shaun Garner at Russell-Cotes Museum, Bournemouth; Louise Night at The Imperial, Torquay and Peter Gibbs the hotels PR; Malcolm Darch of the Salcombe Maritime Museum; Frank Smith, ex-Salcombe coxswain; Deborah Clarke and Tony Orchard of Burgh Island; Colin Richards at Gara Rock Hotel; Lesley Brunning at the Ship Inn, Mayo; Brian Dudley Stamp at Bude; Sarah Durnford May at Blackpool Pleasure Beach; Charles Crane for his overview of Maryport; Peter Ward and the Echoes of Art Deco trail in Morecambe; Derek Sharman, Berwick-upon-Tweed guide; Barry Mead at the Woodhorn Colliery; Ken Proud at Bempton Cliffs RSPB Nature Reserve; Andrew Fox at Grimsbys National Fishing Heritage Centre; Chris Baron at Butlins Skegness; Tim Lidstone-Scott of Peddars Way; Steve Rowland at Titchfield RSPB; Glenn Ogilvie at Thorpeness; Doreen Raynor, Felixstowe historian; Andy Russer of the Harwich Preservation Society; and Mike Baird at Clacton Pier.

The Gods do not subtract from the allotted span of mens lives the hours spent in fishing.
Sign in Lyme Regis harbour

The strangest country I ever visited was England: but I visited it at a very early age and so became a little queer myself.
GK Chesterton, Autobiography (1936)

England is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, anomalies, hobbies and humours.
George Santayana, Soliloquies in England (1922)

The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust

A low rumble of thunder
a leviathan stirring fathoms deep.

6 a.m. dawn trips on a storm
blowing in from the Atlantic and scurries
back in its cave
leaving night to pick over the day.

Above the hieroglyphs of fishermen
the neat mnemonic of a skylark
following its songline, singing
its laus perennis to the English coast.

The highest temperature ever experienced in Britain was recorded the summer I drove 2,800 miles round the edge of England. Things were changing and everyone knew it. Sure, locals continued to be concerned about coastal erosion, the demise of fishing and their villages becoming Londons un-gated retirement home. But there was something else in the air. We had arrived at the beginning of the end. Within our childrens lifetime, if not our own, the British coastline, and our way of life, would change for ever.

After two thousand years of land reclamation, we have finally accepted the inevitable and embarked on a programme of managed retreats, allowing the sea to take back swathes of coast. Rising water levels and bigger storm surges are just two of the sentences wreaked upon us by the gods for ripping open the ozone layer and treating our home planet like bad house guests. In the galaxy of global-warming doomsday scenarios currently occupying our scientists, the one gathering ever more support sees the gods upping the stakes further and switching off the conveyor belt of the Gulf Stream. As a result, in ten, twenty or a hundred years, Britain may well plunge into the kind of Arctic conditions our latitude deserves three months of snow annually, ice floes off the coast and no Punch and Judy on Weymouth Beach.