Plymouth By Heart — The eBook

so you found your way here.

maybe you saw the post. maybe someone shared it. maybe you've been thinking about Plymouth for a while and something just clicked when you read it.

either way, you're here. and that's not an accident.

I'm not going to do the whole "buy my book" thing because honestly that's not what this is. this is me telling you that I spent the best part of a year walking this city with my phone in my hand writing notes at six in the morning, on drizzly Sundays, on random Tuesday afternoons when I took a wrong turn and ended up somewhere that genuinely stopped me in my tracks.

all of it is in here.

the things that took me two years to find. the things I wish someone had told me when I pulled up on that wet January morning off Lipson Road thinking I'd made the biggest mistake of my life. the stuff that isn't on TripAdvisor, isn't on the Visit Plymouth website, isn't in any listicle written by someone who came down for a weekend and left Sunday afternoon thinking they'd seen it.

they hadn't seen a thing.

Plymouth By Heart is for you if you're thinking about moving here and you want the honest version from someone who actually did it, not the estate agent version, not the council tourism version, the real one

it's for you if you're visiting and you want to actually see Plymouth rather than just walk the Hoe, take a photo of the Mayflower steps, and wonder what the fuss is about

it's for you if you've just moved here and you're still in that phase where you're not quite sure yet, still finding your feet, still waiting for it to click

and it's for you if you've lived here for years, love the place, but have never quite been able to explain to anyone from back home exactly why you stayed

inside you'll find the Barbican that the tourists never reach. the back lanes off New Street and Southside Street that have been quietly brilliant for four centuries and have absolutely no interest in telling anyone about it.

you'll find Tinside Lido, Art Deco, Grade II listed, seawater, Drake's Island right there in front of you, and somehow most of the country has never heard of it.

you'll find the exact time to be on the Hoe if you want it to yourself. the specific morning light that'll make you stop walking and just stand there.

you'll find Burrator Reservoir on Dartmoor, forty minutes from your front door, black water, tors in the mist, the kind of silence that doesn't happen to people who live in cities, and I tell you exactly when to go so the car park is empty and it feels like the whole moor belongs to you.

you'll find Devil's Point at the hour the light goes gold. the gin distillery on the Barbican and the bit of history they'll tell you in there that changes how you see the whole city. the Elizabethan House on New Street that's been standing since before the Blitz took most of this place and is barely mentioned anywhere.

you'll find the pub with no Instagram. Plymouth people already know the one. Gary behind the bar will absolutely judge you and somehow that's exactly the point.

and you'll find the spot where you can see everything. the city, the Sound, Dartmoor, all at once. I tell you exactly where to stand. most visitors never find it. plenty of people who've lived here for years haven't looked.

and then there's the thing I found on the walk I nearly didn't do.

wet Sunday. Netflix was right there. I almost didn't bother.

I'm not writing it here.

but every single person who's read that part has messaged me about it. without exception. every one of them said the same thing.

and here's the bit I genuinely love about this. there's no waiting around. no postage. no "allow 5 to 7 working days." you buy it right now and it's on your phone in about two minutes flat. reading it on the train, in the garden, on your lunch break, wherever you are.

it works on everything. your iPhone, your iPad, your Kindle, your Android, your laptop, your tablet. if it's got a screen it'll work. you don't need a special app, you don't need to do anything complicated. it's a proper ebook, clean and easy to read, and it goes straight to you the second you check out.

less than a tenner. instant. readable on whatever you've got in your hand right now.

for everything this city has been quietly sitting on for years, just waiting for someone to actually look.

Plymouth didn't shout about itself when I arrived. it just waited. and when I finally stopped rushing and started paying attention, it showed me everything.

this book is what it showed me.