Drone services in Bridport

Bridport's streets were laid out unusually wide for rope walks, and that has a practical consequence today: access here is easier than in almost any other historic town on this list.

It does not remove the case for a flown survey, because the roofs behind those frontages are still complex, but it does mean the argument here is about proportion rather than impossibility.

The stock is brick and rendered Georgian frontages with slate and clay plain tile, with terraced cottages in the side lanes that are tighter and more awkward.

Rear ranges and later additions behind the wide fronts produce the usual valleys and abutments where the water actually gets in.

Chimney stacks on the older frontages stand well clear of anything sheltering them, so bedding and flaunching take more punishment than the town's inland position would suggest.

The town sits a mile and a half inland in a valley between high greensand hills, and southerly weather funnels straight up from West Bay into it.

Salt reaches the town on strong southerlies, so this is not the sheltered inland position the distance from the sea suggests.

Properties on the higher ground catch wind coming over the greensand hills as well, so exposure varies noticeably between the valley floor and the slopes either side.

Colmers Hill and the surrounding high ground make the local wind behaviour more complicated than a forecast for the wider area conveys.

The valley also holds damp air, so shaded slopes on the lower streets dry slowly and hold growth in a way the properties on the hills either side do not.

Thatch on the outskirts brings the usual rule: the ridge wears first, cannot be walked and cannot be assessed from below, so photographs are the only practical way to judge one without a scaffold.

Terraced cottages in the lanes share valleys and party walls and fail at the junctions rather than in the middle of a slope.

Post-war and modern housing towards West Bay and Bothenhampton is conventional, generating the ordinary short list of findings.

West Bay and the Jurassic cliffs are strong subjects and bring a steady flow of visual work from hospitality and property, since the setting is a large part of what is being sold.

Cliff and coast flights need planning around the drop, footpath traffic and the protected status of the frontage, so they are prepared in advance rather than improvised.

The surrounding farmland brings land, track and boundary work, and the valley ground changes enough between seasons that a dated record earns its keep.

The town is a long coastal run from Exeter, so jobs here are planned and usually paired with Dorchester, Lyme Regis or Weymouth.

Rope and net making left a small industrial legacy as well, with larger roofs in secondary use that carry the usual list of corroded sheeting and blocked valley gutters.