This book is in the same style as the very popular Woodbridge to the Coast, but larger. It covers the Suffolk estuaries, villages and towns on the rivers or near the coast.

It sets out to show how the various outside influences, starting with the Viking and moving on to the Dutch, have help to shape the villages and towns. It moves on to sailing barges and fishing boats of the coast and how the great nineteenth century estates rebuilt the villages and laid out the countryside for pheasant shooting. It explains the beginning of the era of the Forestry Commission who created the huge pine forests and also the bird reserves that make a considerable impact on the coastal area.

It shows how wildly different the towns of Sunrise Coast are. Southwold, Walberswick, Saxmundham, Leiston, Aldeburgh, Orford, Woodbridge and Felixstowe are only a few miles apart, but all have their very own strong identity.

It shows how the estuaries divide the coast up into a series of very different ‘islands.’ The villages on the Shotley, Felixstowe and Bawdsey peninsulas have a very different feeling to the heath land villages north of the River Alde.