Drone services in Lyme Regis

Lyme Regis is built into an actively unstable landslip coast, and that is the single fact that makes surveying here different from anywhere else on this list.

Ground movement adds structural distortion to the ordinary problems of salt and wind, and the earliest visible sign of it is very often in the roof: a ridge line that has gone out of true, a flashing pulled open, a valley that no longer sits square.

Those are exactly the details nobody can assess from the pavement, and they are the ones worth photographing on a repeat basis rather than once.

A repeat record flown to the same pattern earns its keep here, because the question is usually whether something has moved further rather than whether it is out of true at all.

Movement also opens joints in masonry, and once a joint is open the water that gets into it accelerates everything else, which is why catching distortion early matters more here than in a stable town.

The historic core of cottages and Georgian townhouses sits on streets steep enough to make conventional access difficult and expensive on most of the older buildings.

Buildings sit above one another, so roofs discharge towards their neighbours and establishing where a leak starts is awkward from ground level.

Slate hanging on exposed elevations is common and doing a job rather than decorating, protecting walls that would otherwise take driving rain from the south-west directly.

Flat roofs on cliffside extensions are the other recurring subject, and they combine an exposed position with a junction to an older building.

Listed status is common through the core, so a photographic record of an existing detail before any work is a routine requirement rather than an unusual request.

The town faces south-west with the sea immediately below, so salt and gale exposure are constant rather than occasional.

That accelerates everything: fixings, flashings, render, and any metalwork on an exposed elevation.

Victorian villas on the upper slopes are less sheltered than their position suggests, because wind coming off the water rises over the town rather than passing across it.

The Cobb and the fossil beaches are among the best known frontages on this coast, and property and hospitality here trade heavily on the setting.

Coast flights are planned around footpath traffic, the drop and the protected status of the Undercliff and the beaches, and the landslip ground itself limits where an aircraft can sensibly be launched from.

Modern housing inland at Uplyme and along the Charmouth road is conventional and straightforward by comparison, producing the ordinary findings.

It is a long coastal run from Exeter, so work here is planned and usually paired with Seaton, Axminster or Bridport in the same day.

Property here sells on the position above the Cobb and the coast, and that relationship between a building and its setting is precisely what a photograph taken at street level cannot convey.