Fishing beach

Here we are at Hastings fishing beach. Hastings has the largest beach-harboured fishing fleet in Europe, we keep on being told. What that actually means is that the original harbour got washed away in a big storm in the 13th century and we still haven't got around to replacing it yet. Though to be fair, the same storm did strand the ports of Winchelsea and Rye directly to the east of Hastings a couple of miles inland.

The tall black weatherboarded structures that you see in the photo (and which you see the bottom of in the cartoon) are net huts. They're kind of like multi-storey garden sheds, a result of the lack of space between the cliffs and the shore for buildings to be put up on. Some of the fisherman store their nets and tackle in them. They don't actually hang their nets up to dry in them - that's just a story we like to tell tourists.

There are also a few wholesale fishmongers on the beach. As Jones has just discovered...