Beautiful and significant areas of coastline
Ten incredibly rare chart drawings that show in stages the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, a defining moment in the creation of England’s maritime identity, have been saved from export in January 2021
With stunning views over Plymouth Sound the Royal Plymouth Corinthian YC's clubhouse has to be one of the most distinct addresses in the city. The building dates back to 1688, a hundred years after the Armada, and it was built as part of the fortified royal citadel. It became the club's home in 1896 and [...]
Shipbuilding, and yachtbuilding, are long gone from the Clyde, and the former yards along Glasgow’s waterfront have been replaced with shiny concert and conference venues and the like. But there are still active and lively links with the city’s maritime past. Known locally just as ‘The Tall Ship’, the 245ft, three-masted barque Glenlee, the last [...]
Portsmouth Point is the spit of land to starboard as you sail through the narrow bottleneck into Portsmouth Harbour from the Solent. It’s chock full of history, much of it disreputable since it was largely outside the city walls and a leisure resort for shore-leave sailors. There were reputed to be over 30 pubs in [...]
As he gazed at a map of Britain the bored schoolboy could imagine a kind of seated, turbanned figure looking west about to draw on a poster – Ireland. We could even see that he was holding a pen, with his thumb cocked over it, in contemplation. Well if the thumb is Anglesey, then the [...]
Top photo: Seven Sisters from Hope Gap by Seaford Head. Bottom: Beachy Head Lighthouse Often, ‘Classic Coast’ consists of the built environment – man-made harbours, houses and hostelries. But occasionally the landscape itself commands attention and nowhere is this more true than the length of Sussex coast known as the Seven Sisters, and [...]
Following on from Classic Coast at Porthdinllaen in the April/May 2017 issue (it really is an idyllic place though I wouldn’t have described the Ty Coch as a gastro pub; didn’t do food in the evenings in August 2016, yet has been rightly voted one of the ten best beach bars in the world), it’s [...]
It was Easter, but bitterly cold, so we had the river pretty much to ourselves and it was like being back in the 19th or even (for Poldark fans) the 18th century. We were aboard Luke Powell’s replia Scillonian pilot cutter Agnes, and most of the time, our only companions on the river were his [...]
Penzance is the most westerly of the three great harbour towns of West Cornwall. It is less of a honeypot than St Ives and Falmouth, but it is at least as rewarding. For a start it gives you more elbow-room – it’s more spaciously laid out and Market Jew Street, with its raised pavements, is [...]
