Top 10 book ideas for lovers of coasts and salty shores
The seas, coasts and edges of our small island are endlessly evocative. They inspire holidays, day trips, adventures, surfs, swims, coast-path treks and so much more. If you want to buy an ocean-appropriate book as a gift for the sea lover in your life, find inspiration in our top ten book tips below. We include The Coastal Café Guide in our selection even though it’s not out until 2024 (we wanted to put it on your readerly radar). Scroll down and join our mailing list for launch updates: we’ve got a feeling that The Coastal Café Guide might just become the freshest, foodiest guide of 2024. It’ll almost certainly be the saltiest…
Tide, by Hugh Aldersey-Williams
This book’s strapline, The Science and Lore of the Greatest Force on Earth, reminds you of just how powerful our seas and tides are. Explore the tide’s impact upon topics as diverse as literature, poetry and warfare in this enlightening read.
Read a Guardian review here. Buy the book from Waterstones.
The Salt Path, by Raynor Winn
Raynor Winn’s account of walking the South West Coast Path with her husband, Moth, quite possibly needs no introduction as it topped the bestsellers’ lists for 70+ weeks upon its release. It’s a tale of unwanted adventure and survival against a whole swathe of implausibly unfortunate odds, lived out along the windswept length of the coastal path. Raynor has since written two further critically acclaimed books, The Wild Silence and Landlines.
Read a review. Buy The Salt Path from Waterstones.
The Hive Cookbook Volume III
The Hive Beach Café, a seaside restaurant on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast, has a staunch following of locals and visitors. Not content with merely enjoying their fishy fares while in town, fans can now replicate their first-rate food at home with this third cookbook volume. The chefs’ passion for sustainability and freshly sourced local ingredients ripples throughout the book: and that’s why you’ll find Hive Beach Café plus sister restaurants The Club House and Watch House Café in The Coastal Café Guide, out in 2024.
Buy the book from Hive Beach Café.
Fish, by Mitch Tonks
What renowned chef and seafood maestro Mitch Tonks doesn’t know about fish you could probably squish into a sardine tin. Thankfully, he’s kindly shared everything he does know in his cookbook collection and this comprehensive, fish-first kitchen companion: Fish. Mitch keeps sustainability on its rightful pedestal and has his hand in many great seafood restaurants across the South West, from family favourites, Rockfish, to more exclusive haute cuisine hideouts. Fish is a great gift for would-be chefs and seafood ‘a-fishionados’ everywhere.
Buy books from Rockfish direct.
The Seaside: England’s Love Affair
While not a chef’s tome, Madeleine Bunting’s new release, The Seaside, offers plenty of food for thought on what England’s coastal resorts and towns reveal about the state of the nation. As reported in The Guardian, ‘Bunting’s methodology is to arrive in a town and then go for a swim, even when the sea is the colour of tea.’ Exploring the histories and current realities of iconic resorts from Weston-super-Mare to Blackpool, The Seaside makes for a gripping if not always cheery read for those fascinated by England’s salt-fringed edges.
Read a review. Buy The Seaside.
The Hidden Hut
Simon Stallard set up acclaimed outdoor restaurant The Hidden Hut in 2011: remote, off-grid and inaccessible by car. This doesn’t stop over 22,000 people trying to book just 600 covers each summer. While you can’t recreate his atmospheric feasts, smouldering fire pits in the sand and wind-chime fish smokers, you can have a good stab at his signature, field-to-fork dishes thanks to The Hidden Hut cookbook (which is a lot easier to lay your hands on than a seat at his table).
Buy The Hidden Hut: Irresistible recipes from Cornwall’s Best Kept Secret.
Wild Swimming’s Hidden Beaches, by Daniel Start
Wild Guides do a phenomenal job when it comes to seeking out the best spots to swim, surf, dip, walk, eat and wake across the land. For the coast-goer who has almost everything, the Hidden Beaches guide opens up new ocean-going opportunities in coves unlikely to be deluged by the hordes just as you settle in for a post-swim, post-picnic nap. The only challenge? You really don’t want anyone else to have bought the same book as you…
Buy Hidden Beaches.
Blue Mind, by Wallace J Nichols
In our book suggestions so far, we’ve discussed culinary, physical and cultural coastal landscapes and have even thrown some tidal science in for good measure. But what actually draws us to and into the sea? Can being in, on, under or merely near the sea really benefit our wellbeing? Wallace J Nichols is a scientist and activist whose book takes a deep-dive into the remarkable effects and surprising science of the ocean’s effect on mind, body and mood.
Read a Guardian review. Buy Blue Mind.
The Seafood Shack: Food and Tales from Ullapool
Ullapool is a tiny place that leaves a large imprint on the tastebuds. This is in no small part due to excellent eateries like The Seafood Shack: a true highlight along Scotland’s North Coast 500 touring route. This stylish volume unites the writing and cooking skills of Kirsty Scobie and Fenella Renwick, a duo that launched a crowdfunding campaign to open Ullapool’s favourite seafood stop-in. Drop by to taste the same vibrant and fresh dishes that won them BBC Food’s Best Streetfood/Takeaway Award, or follow these recipes to cook up your own salty storm at home.
Buy The Seafood Shack cookbook direct.
The Coastal Café Guide: Eating on the Edge
OK you’ve caught us out: our tenth book choice is not yet published. The Coastal Café Guide is coming in 2024 from Printslinger, the independent publishing house behind bestselling food and travel guidebook The Extra Mile: Delicious Alternatives to Motorway Services.
The Coastal Café Guide will bring together eateries on the very edge of Britain: coastal cafés, restaurants, containers, cabins and more, from the salt-tinged fringes of England, Scotland, Wales and the surrounding islands.
Scroll down to join our coastal community mailing list for launch updates and offers as we wait for this first-of-a-kind guidebook to arrive in 2024.
Buy our current guide
The Coastal Café Guide might not be out yet but all is not lost. If you seek a guidebook packed with excellent eateries to make your journey to the coast that little bit more memorable, get our 2023 bestseller and online ‘most gifted’ travel guide, The Extra Mile: Delicious Alternatives to Motorway Services. You’ll even get 10% off by using the discount code: coast in our our Online Shop.
