The ruins of 23 houses and a school are all that survive of the coastal hamlet on the clifftop.

One by one, coastal hamlets lapped up that aspirational vision of purity, stripping their beaches of anything that trespassed on them.

Our route takes us to skinny-fingered inlets and scattered coastal hamlets — tiny places, these, where terraced apple and cherry orchards rise above clapboard homes, coffee shops and knitting stores.