A new Cornish cycling route that takes in some of the UK’s most spectacular coastal scenery as well as atmospheric old industrial works and bronze age monuments is due to open in the autumn.

Called the West Kernow Way, the 150-mile route begins and ends in Penzance and is designed to take four days to complete.

The charity Cycling UK has been working for more than a year on developing the project, plotting a route using bridleways, byways and quiet stretches of country road.

Highlights will include Land’s End, the most westerly place in mainland England, the Lizard Point, the most southerly spot of mainland Britain, and the island castle and gardens of St Michael’s Mount.

Other attractions include the tin mine engine houses that cling to the cliffs at Botallack and the open air Minack Theatre, which perches above the Atlantic.

Cyclists will also be able to visit the extraordinary standing stones Mên-an-Tol and Carn Brea, the hilltop castle and monument.

Sophie Gordon, Cycling UK’s campaigns officer, said: “The landscape has so much to offer, from the natural beauty of Lizard Point to the wilds of the north coast, but we want to dive into the culture and history of Cornwall too.

Supertrawlers spent almost 3,000 hours fishing in UK marine protected areas in 2019, making “a mockery of the word ‘protected’,” according to campaigners.

Supertrawlers are those over 100 metres in length and can catch hundreds of tonnes of fish every day, using nets up to a mile long. A Greenpeace investigation revealed that the 25 supertrawlers included the four biggest in the world and fished in 39 different marine protected areas (MPAs).

The Southern North Sea MPA was one of those fished and was created to safeguard porpoises, which are especially threatened by supertrawlers. More than 1,000 porpoises died in fishing nets around the UK in 2019. The most heavily fished MPA was the Wyville Thomson Ridge, off Shetland, which was intended to protect reefs. All the supertrawler fishing was legal.

Forty per cent of England’s seas are designated as MPAs, but these only ban some of the most damaging activities in some locations. On Monday, an independent review commissioned by the government urged the establishment of highly protected marine areas (HPMAs), where all harmful activities including fishing, dredging and construction are banned. The government’s own assessment in 2019 showed the marine environment is not in a healthy state.

“Our government allowing destructive supertrawlers to fish for thousands of hours every year in MPAs makes a mockery of the word ‘protected’,” said Chris Thorne of Greenpeace UK. “For our government to be taken seriously as a leader in marine protection, it must ban this practice.”

Strung with vast and often-deserted beaches, the Norfolk Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty is one of the county’s primary draws. It’s not just the beaches that lure visitors, however — backed by dunes and fringed with pine forests, this dramatic, 175sq-mile stretch of rural England also features mudflats and saltmarshes that teem with a rich variety of wildlife. Base yourself in the heart of the AONB and you’ll find plenty to while away a weekend: charming flint houses and medieval churches in sleepy villages like Wells-next-the-Sea and Burnham Market, bracing walks in the sea breeze, and a fantastic food scene, with fresh, locally caught fish taking a starring role on menus all along the coast. visitnorfolk.co.uk

Although the industry is a tiny part of the UK economy – worth less than 0.1% of the total in 2018 – it has become emblematic of a plucky, independent Britain, freed from the shackles of restrictions and regulations set by other people in other places, forging its own way in the world.

Much, therefore, is riding on trade talks that are due to begin at the start of March. According to Nigel Farage, fishing will be the “acid test” of Brexit. Boris Johnson reinforced this view in a key speech on EU trade negotiations earlier this month. Any agreement must ensure that “British fishing grounds are first and foremost for British boats”, said the prime minister, who visited Brixham last summer to meet fishermen and sample hake and chips on the quayside.

The timetable is extremely tight, with the EU saying that an agreement on fishing must be reached by the end of July, and the talks will be tough. A fishing deal is a precondition to a wider trade agreement, the EU has said – and some European politicians and officials have suggested that Britain’s access to the EU’s lucrative financial services markets could depend on EU fleets being allowed to continue to fish in UK waters on the same basis as now.

At the heart of the talks are issues of access and quotas. Under the EU’s common fisheries policy (CFP), all member states have equal access to EU waters apart from the first 12 nautical miles from the coast. At the end of this year, the UK will become an independent coastal state, operating under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea rather than the CFP. As such, Britain will have control over an “exclusive economic zone” up to 200 nautical miles off its shores – some of the most bountiful seas in the world.

Quotas are set for fish species in Brussels each year following scientific advice about the levels of stocks, and are allocated to member states on the basis of historic practice. Currently, EU boats are entitled to more than 60% of overall landings by weight from the seas around the UK, and for some species the proportion is greater. For example, the UK is allocated 9% of Channel cod, while the French get 84%. From next year, quota shares will be negotiated rather than decided in Brussels.

‘This pier,” said the Earl of Granville, when he opened Hastings Pier in 1872, “appears to me to be a peerless pier – a pier without a peer – except, perhaps, the unfortunate peer who is now addressing you.” Now, 145 years on, after a chequered life of spectacular fires and reincarnations of mixed success, Hastings Pier has once again been declared peerless – as the winner of the 2017 RIBA Stirling prize for the best building in the UK.

The structure is a far cry from the elaborate confection that impressed the Earl, a classic piece of seaside Victoriana designed by pier supremo Eugenius Birch, encrusted with twinkling lights and crowned with a Moorish pavilion. Instead, visitors to the seaside town are greeted by a stark wooden deck thrust out over the sea. Nicknamed The Plank, it eschews the usual kiss-me-quick seaside clutter (plenty of which can be found further along the beach), in favour of a neutral platform to host a range of different activities. Well supplied with electricity and other services, it is a blank canvas for the lively programme of bouncy castles, carousels and concerts. When not in festive mode, it is a powerful expanse, a place that is free to enter where you can hover above the water, inhale the sea air and take in the epic views.

Hastings Pier is the work of London-based architects de Rijke Marsh Morgan, who have been shortlisted for the Stirling on two previous occasions: in 2010 for a colourful primary school in Clapham, London, and last year for a housing scheme in the controversial redevelopment of the Heygate Estate in the borough of Southwark. In Hastings, they have thankfully shown a greater sensitivity to the local community.