LESSER KNOWN LYME REGIS – JOANNA SMITH

AN INSPIRED New Year’s resolution could be to find out more about a local town – perhaps even the very place you call home.

This handy guide to Lyme Regis includes six guided walks and focuses on some of the things you never knew about the Dorset coastal town.

It features some of Lyme’s best known characters such as walk leader Natalie Manifold and storyteller Chris Lovejoy.

Smith also devotes a whole section to fossils and fossil hunting, particularly timely in light of fossil hunting in the resort recently being voted the world’s second most popular beach activity.

She also comes up with some interesting trivia that many of us won’t know, such as the fact that Beatrix Potter spent a holiday at Mariners Hotel in Silver Street in 1904.

Another is that the American artist James McNeill Whistler spent three months in Lyme working in a rented studio off Broad Street.

You may not even be aware that there is a Banksy illustration in Lyme, but this book rights those wrongs.

The Exploring section contains some extremely easy strolls that would be suitable for even the least mobile – such as a 600 metre walk along the town’s iconic Cobb pointing out other interesting sites and plaques on the way.

There is even a seasonal guide to the town’s many and unique events such as the Lyme Lympics and Guitars on the Beach.

For someone like myself who has spent nearly eight years living and working in Dorset and thought they knew Lyme well, this book has opened my eyes up to parts of the town that I never knew existed; it is a real treat to delve beyond the tourist veneer.

Lesser Known Lyme is published by Roving Press at £11.99. See rovingpress.co.uk JOANNA DAVIS