By Catherine Nixey, Britain correspondent, The Economist
YOU WILL walk past Pevensey, where William the Conqueror landed, and Margate, where the Spanish Armada did not. You will walk past Plymouth, from where the Mayflower famously set sail, and Southampton, from where the Titanic infamously did. You will walk past places made famous in poetry and song: past Lyme Regis, where Mary Anning sold seashells on the seashore, past Scarborough Fair, and past the blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover. You will walk along a “footpath through British history”, says David Abulafia, a professor of history at Cambridge University, and its “relationship with the sea”.