A Walk by the Sea

John had always wanted to walk the coastline of the UK and after successful hip surgery, after a foot and mouth epidemic that had all but closed the countryside was declared over, he set off on foot from Land’s End to circumnavigate an island with a longer coastline than France or India with a variety of landscapes, seascapes and cultures.

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“The British coast is where journeys begin and where journeys end, where sun rises and where sun sets.” In John Chatterton’s A Walk by the Sea, John tells the story of his journey from Land’s End to circumnavigate an island with a longer coastline than France or India with an infinite variety of landscapes, seascapes and cultures. After having always wanted to walk the coastline of Great Britain and returning to normality after the foot and mouth epidemic was declared over in 2001, John started his epic journey around Great Britain. He quickly realised that this was not just a walk, and this book is certainly not a walker’s handy guidebook to the periphery of Blake’s ‘green and pleasant land,’ but something much deeper and meaningful. For John, walking gets the most out of travel, but this was a ‘journey’ not a walk. The journey is a reflection of Britain in the first millennium of the 21st century - its events its places and its people. Walking, unlike other forms of travel, allows time for expansion of thoughts and ideas, and reflections on life and times. This journey uses Britain as a backdrop to explore philosophical, social, political, geographical and cultural issues that spring to mind on the way. Although these thoughts and ideas are physically separate from the journey, John explains how they are also a deeply intrinsic part of it too. “A Walk by the Sea is much more than a usual guidebook but, instead, is a psycho-geographical journey around the Great British coastline in the first decade of the new millennium,” comments John.