Exeter; Saturday, 28 May, 2016

I looked out of the window in the morning expecting the clouds and rain that had been forecast, instead to be greeted with hazy warm sunshine. After a swift breakfast in the hotel restaurant I headed out to start exploring the city and started by visiting the gardens and castle ruins immediately opposite the hotel itself.

Having looked around some visible remains of Exeter’s past my next stop was some slightly more hidden remains in the form of the Underground passages that were originally built to ensure that the pipes that fed fresh water to the cathedral and later the city could be maintained without the need to keep digging up the road – what a crazy idea. The passages survived for their original purpose into the very beginning of the 20th century and have since had a life as an air-raid shelter. They’ve been a tourist attraction since the 1930s and are now open for regular tours.

After taking the tour and having a look around the interesting museum I stopped for a quick bite to eat before wandering down through the town, past the Cathedral and the remains of the Medieval Exe Bridge now left abandoned as the course of the river has been changed, and down to the historic Quay side to have a look around.

Whilst down there I saw a sign for a cruise down the Exe to the Double locks – at this point the river was one of the first in the world to be Canalised as needed a couple of locks to get ships from the sea up to the city centre – so I decided to pick up the boat. The route is interesting as in a number of occasions a member of the crew has to hop out, close off both ends of a bridge, unlock it and then swing it round to allow the ship to pass through, before repeating the process in reverse to allow people access back across the river.

The cruise ended at the Double Locks, which is now also a very conveniently and picturesquely sited pub, so I stopped there for a quick drink before the mile and a half or so back into town.

By now most of the sites in the city centre were either closed or about to close, but I still had several hours of light left so I headed over to the Central station and picked up a train out along the coast to the small station at Dawlish Warren.

Between Dawlish Warren and Dawlish, the Great Western Railway, and more importantly Brunel, undertook one of the most impressive, but also idiotic, builds. The railway runs along the top of the sea wall, which makes for stunning photos as trains are lashed by pounding waves – and on a lovely balmy spring evening makes for a lovely walk – but finally proved to not be indestructible in February 2014 when a large section was swept away and the whole of Southern Devon and all of Cornwall was cut off from the national rail network. The walk is very pleasant, with a slight climb at the start over the edge of Red Rock, but then a flat and level walk between the sea and the railway all the way into Dawlish.

By the time I got to Dawlish I’d built up a bit of an appetite so I stopped for dinner there before catching the last direct train of the night back to Exeter Central and the welcome sight of my bed to rest my now very weary feet and legs.