Holyer an Gof Publishers’ Award
‘A wonderful book… a cabinet of curiosities’
BBC Coast’s Nick Crane
‘Quite simply the closest I have ever seen anyone come to describing the seashore in the way I feel the seashore’
Sir Tim Smit, Eden Project
A collection of photographs, discoveries and natural history that is by turn atmospheric, quirky and fascinating. Many of the photographs are glimpses of the mercurial sea around Cornwall’s shores, from jewel-like pools to waves powering into cliffs.
Woven in with these is Lisa’s haphazard museum of finds – the often strangely beautiful things she has picked up on Cornwall’s shores. There are some wonderful names – by-the-wind sailors, a warty venus, landlady’s wig – and some extraordinary creatures in this intertidal world, their lives at times violent, charming and bizarre.
There is much of the evocative and often mysterious language of the sea, with some beautiful old Cornish words and phrases: a lot of portents of bad weather – sun-dogs, the weather-eye, graving clouds – and a telling number to describe a fine misty drizzle.
There is also the odd maritime legend – fog-shrouded spirits that foretell storms, lost lands and legendary floods – and some wonderful oceanographers’ research: a science of washed up trainers, bath ducks and fisherman’s boots lost at sea.