Both Jeremy Moore and Jon Gower are well known in their respective fields and have previously covered parts of this journey (Jeremy Moore's Pembrokeshire with Trevor Fishlock and Jon Gower's TV series on the same area, for instance). However, both clearly felt that this project widened and deepened their experience of the well-known land and, in Moore's case, led him to explore aspects of his craft in a new way.The result is a rich and individual response to the present realities of coastal Wales as well as a record of the history which has shaped it. The reader is made intensely aware of mutability, of the ebb and flow not only of the tidal margin itself but of human use and abandonment of the landscape.The sequence begins in the river Severn where, under the 'strung-steel . Aeolian harp' bridge, the last lave net fishermen fish for salmon - but the fish are few and the fisherman is a Llanwern steel worker. This sets the tone for what is much more than a beautiful picture book with poetic commentary (though it is that too).In images such as the magnificent orange and black study of Milford Haven, the concrete sterility of Rhyl's 'Fun Centre' or the curiously timeless palimpsest of 'Stone graffiti on the Great Orme', Jeremy Moore comments eloquently on human interaction with nature.

More unusually he also does so through his portraits of people who live by the coast, including a friendly shopkeeper on Penarth pier, a sailing coach at Plas Menai and an eminent climate-change scientist near Aberdyfi. Jon Gower smoothly knits together a web of stories from mythical heroes, imperialist kings, smugglers, wreckers, miners and saints with up-to- the-minute reports on vast new sea defences at Borth and the revival of Mostyn docks by shipping Airbus wings to Bordeaux.The broad sweep and idiosyncratic or telling details characterise the work of both photographer and writer. Sometimes Jeremy Moore can achieve both at once in his close, fractal studies of rock and sand ('Mewslade Bay', 'Gower' or 'Near Rhoscolyn') where one might be looking at a few square inches of shore or mountain valleys and desert details from the air - or the distant past.This publication coincides with the opening of coastal paths which, like this book, follow the whole fascinating and varied profile of Wales. It is an excellent inspiration to its readers to go and explore for themselves.