Great Britain, clockwise

All the great coastal towns of England were a mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous.

Paul Theroux, The Kingdom by the Sea

The ridiculous, not the sublime, was what most interested Paul Theroux during his excursion clockwise around the coast of Great Britain in the summer of 1982, and he found plenty of it. He wrote about his trip in The Kingdom by the Sea (1983), a book now dated yet still fascinating.

Even though many of the coastal towns have traditionally been tourist draws, even in 1982 most of them were already a bit seedy, living in the past. Theroux saw himself not as a tourist but as an observer, pretending to be "in publishing" without actually disclosing that he was a writer. His recording of conversations, whether he was a part of them or not, should have given him away, however. These conversations, many of them hilarious, form the heart of his book. The Falklands War was in progress at this time, and many of the conversations are about the progress of the war.

The author's observations are often priceless, as when he says, "It was hard to distinguish hotels in England from prisons or hospitals — most of them were run with the same indifference or cruelty, and were equally uncomfortable." And he observes that one of "travel's pleasures was turning your back" on unpleasant people and moving on, "never having to explain."

He traveled much of the way around the island from one town to another by train, yet already in 1982 rail service was spotty, many once busy lines having been abandoned. Often he had to go by bus, although he found bus travel in England no better than that he had experienced in Third World countries. Sometimes he went by boat, necessary when he went to Northern Ireland. For shorter trips he enjoyed walking.

At several points in his book he wonders why people along the coast, and not just the tourists, spend so much time staring out to the sea, as if there were something strange about this. Yet why would tourists go to the beach and place their chairs facing inland? At the end of his book Theroux comments that "instead of looking out to sea, I had looked inland."

Coastal towns are naturally different from most other towns, made so by the sea itself, the gulls, the breeze, the smells, the tourists and the kinds of attractions that draw tourists. Yet his book tends to be more about people than anything else. He seems quick to generalize about these people, concluding that those in one village are this way and those in another are that way, and so forth. I was reminded of an old cartoon  about a returned traveler who says something like, "People in Bolivia walk in single file. At least the two I saw did."