A series of articles about a coach holiday to Sidmouth, in Devon, England. Our base for the week was the Royal York and Faulkner Hotel in Sidmouth and we will explore nearby seaside towns, the city of Exeter and some gardens, a swannery and a donkey sanctuary. A tram ride will also come into the equation at some point.
Clicking or tapping the photos below will take you to each of the articles. A link on each page will bring you back here.
Wednesday 30 August 2023. It's our last day down in Devon. Our trip today is to Exmouth with an included 2-hour cruise along the Jurassic Coast in a boat after lunch. I wasn't feeling so well and spent the whole time before the cruise just sitting on a bench in the Market Square, whilst Miss Franny alternately sat with me or went for a wander around the shops and market.
By lunchtime I was starting to feel better and managed to get seats on the boat out in the open but sheltered a bit by the enclosed space in front of us. Seating was on foldaway chairs, not the most comfortable or even unmoving seats to have on a boat perhaps, but we didn't run aground or meet any violent rocking motion caused by whales or the Kraken surfacing beneath us, so all was well.
The boat had both an enclosed cabin below and an open deck on top. The reason we went for the open deck was that the tide was out and this is where the gangplank led! As the boat filled up with people, passengers who wanted to sit with friends started moving the folding chairs about, blocking aisles and access for those still trying to get on...
The sun came out every now and then, turning the rocks a more vivid colour and we passed some impressive stacks - Harry's Rocks(?) - no because they are chalk not sandstone stacks. I'm not really sure whose they were, but they were the sort of thing I would have avoided getting too close to...
The Captain - didn't quite catch his name, Ahab or something(?) - turned the boat into the cliffs and the commentary mentioned kittywakes, shags and cormorants. Cormorants I can recognise but the others are just gulls and best avoided without suitable head covering and certainly not to be trusted near any fish and chips. Very congenial, but less so for the passengers trying to eat ice creams...
One woman lost hers altogether and there was much shrieking and wailing as it went over the side. Not all of it coming from the gulls either... In fact, in this case it was nothing to do with the gulls but more the fact that she turned her cone on its side to eat it horizontally. Gravity emptied the cone faster than she could...
We went past Budleigh Salterton, seen on our first full day of the holiday and turned round within sight of Sidmouth. The boat was shaped a bit like a brick so it wasn't the fastest thing on water. I presume it was a touch more streamlined under the waterline as otherwise we'd have felt quite a bit more motion. And probably not as dense as a brick or otherwise the motion would have been vertical...
Exmouth comes back into view eventually and the tide has come in a bit so there's more of a slope to the gangplank as we disembark. Andrew has the coach ready and waiting nearby and we head back to the hotel for our last evening.
Thursday 31 August 2023. 7:00am - cases outside our rooms. 8:00am - breakfast. 9:00am - bus! Clear instructions you would think. Even so apparently a woman announced she had to go back to her room after breakfast at 9:10. "No more than ten minutes please..." she was asked. "Oh... don't rush me! Don't rush me!" came the reply.
The other coach party in the hotel (from a different company) were going home half an hour earlier than we were. The coach driver, waiting for the last two passengers to come to the bus well beyond their deadline took the coach up the road to the turnround point saying to our driver, "They'll come running once I set off don't worry!" Sure enough they appeared like magic but he didn't stop and left them waiting and panicking whilst he turned round and came back down the seafront before he picked them up!
Here's our coach on the motorway services as we were on the last stop before before we started dropping off passengers back onto feeder minibuses which took them back to their homes. G-Line - I'd recommend them any time!
Wednesday 25 June. We decided that today we would move the car and set out to leave Devon by the back door and ventured into Dorset, the next county along, coming into the town of Lyme Regis.
I remember fondly in the past, you parked your car in a car park and then when ready to leave you paid an attendant who calculated what you had to pay by how long you had been parked. These days no one is willing to employ people to do this when machines can do the job. But unfortunately they don't seem able to do exactly the same job so you have to decide before leaving the car how long you want to stay and pay up front. Most people err on the safe side and car parks get extortionate amounts from people who then find they have exhausted a place of all they want to see and leave before their due time.
We parked in an NCP car park which ended up costing eight pounds for two and a quarter hours. The fee covered a parking duration of between two and four hours so we did not pay for time that we didn't eat into a bit but even so... I'm sure you could park in central London cheaper than that!
Lyme was a Saxon town, mentioned in the Domesday book by the Normans and given its charter by King Edward I in 1284 at which point the word Regis was tagged onto the town's name.
We found this enticing display opposite a typical south coast pebble beach and I wondered about the shop owners' sanity until we found that further along on a corner of beach before the harbour there was a wonderful sandy swathe of beach. Maybe it was imported, maybe it's always been there, I'm not sure.
Buckets and spades were always metal when I was a lad. Spades hurt when you dug one into your toe by mistake...
The Cobb is Lyme's harbour. Famous for being the main lookout for The French Lieutenant's Woman and also mentioned in Jane Austen's novel Persuasion, it is Lyme's most literary spot.
The film with Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons was partly filmed in Lyme. That is indeed the Cobb harbour wall that features on the poster.
Looking from our spot closer to the harbour back towards the east we can see the blue cliffs of this bit of the Jurassic Coast in the distance. They are the Blue Lias cliffs, richly deposited with fossils of early dinosaurs and sea creatures with both ammonites, the large spiral shelled icky-looking creature and bits of the pleasingly ferocious-looking ichthyosaur, a sort of reptilian shark being found in seemingly abundance.
The ammonites in particular are so well represented that even numpties like me can find them lying on the beach, though you have to be a bit luckier to find one that hasn't been weathered to mere coloured lines on a stone! The town's lampposts incorporate the ammonite shell structure.
We sat on the corner of the sandy beach on a picnic bench provided outside Jane's Cafe and had a morning coffee. The cruet set made me wonder just how many portions of fish and chips must be eaten by the seaside every day? Answer: none - they are all eaten by people... Sorry - a momentary lapse...
Whilst we sat peacefully listening to the dog on the next table which clearly wanted to rip out the throat of the well-behaved dog at the table opposite, a class of school children walked in a long line to the sandy beach and deposited backpacks on the sand by the low wall. Then at a word from the teacher a mighty cheer split the air and they charged out onto the sand in small groups of friends in a brief frenzy of uncoordinated activity before the drawing boards and pencils came out for a more formal (if just as much fun) lesson.
We blanched a little at the mountain of salt and pepper that was emptied onto a plate of beans on toast at the next table. Yeuch!!! Half the pots emptied! But it wasn't quite to the taste of the perpetrator, for after a single mouthful, she reached for the pots again and emptied the other half... Happy heart attack... Surely the only thing you need to apply to baked beans is heat? Each to their own!
After our coffee and a walk around the Cobb area, we walked back along the seafront to the town. We had a look in the Lyme Fossil Shop. They had some wonderful examples of fossils and crystals with a full ichthyosaur fossil in a display case in a little grotto of a room reached by a short staircase.
This is Lyme Regis's Guildhall. Dating back to Stuart times it is built on the site of the town's lockup. Close to the seafront it can be hired for weddings, holding up to 50 guests according to the Lyme Regis website, 75 guests according to the Dorset For You website. Perhaps the extra 25 have to be capable of sitting on knees?
The theatre sadly had no performances whilst we were there. What do plate spinners, jugglers and ventriloquists do with their time these days, I wonder?
There's a little seating area with a couple of bench seats and an old cannon pointing out to sea on a high viewpoint at the foot of the hill. I had a sit down to watch the comings and goings whilst Fran went into a couple of clothes shops and craft type shops nearby. I'd have only got in the way or knocked something over... Safer to sit and watch the world go by.
This week we had a few days in Devon (with a foray into Dorset on Wednesday). We motored down on Monday morning, arriving in Sidmouth late lunchtime.
Sidmouth is a pleasant seaside town with sandstone cliffs at either end of a Promenade that edges onto a pebble beach. Many of the hotels along the seafront have balconies and hanging flower baskets for colour. A low stone wall separates the Promenade from the roadway and affords visitors a cheap and cheerful spot to sit if the benches are all taken up. Deck chairs are also available at a small half-day rate.
Solid-looking square wooden posts support huge lanterns, though the method of illumination is a bit more modern these days than that of the time the lanterns were first installed! Sidmouth is proud of its past. It was there at the time of Domesday, then being recorded as Sedemuda. George III's son, the Duke of Kent and his Duchess arrived with their infant, later Queen, Victoria on Christmas Day in 1819. Their visit was marred by tragedy as within a month the Duke had died of fever, not helped by the excessive bleeding by doctors trying to cure him. His Duchess was left penniless after his death, due to his debts. Left without any income and unable to flee home to Germany as her daughter was in line for the English throne, she begged the Prince Regent for help but he left her without a penny, doomed to watch all her furniture, horses and other possessions taken away by her creditors. Earlier during the visit, the window of the room in which the Duchess and baby Victoria were in was shattered by a bullet fired by a local boy at a bird. Whilst obviously anxious that the incident should not be repeated the Duke and Duchess asked that the boy not be punished.
At the eastern end of Sidmouth the river Sid flows out into the English Channel. Here is a small collection of moored boats, both fishing boats and more modest boats as seen here. The coast is pretty much a straight line here. It was not possible to build a harbour due to the lack of shelter. The pebbles of the beach have had to be replaced as the sea washed them away during storms in the 1990s.
Luckily whilst we were there the weather was a lot kinder. This small dog was enjoying the sea, going in several times, sometimes dodging, other times being swamped by waves, but always going back into the water for another go!
The cliff at the eastern end is that of Salcombe Hill. It forms part of Devon and Dorset's Jurassic Coast. The red-brown of the cliffs leaches into the sea at this point turning it a deep russet colour. Erosion is a constant threat.
The River Sid, looking inland from the river mouth. A short distance inland it passes through the village of Sidford, where the river can still be crossed by the old ford.
Sunday 8 August 1993. We were in Lyme Regis, leaning over the sea wall to see if the tide had gone out far enough for us to walk round to the fossil beach to search for the fossilised remains of the legendary ellipigerossacow.
Note Dad's left knee which, amazed at being in shorts and seeing daylight, is talking excitedly to his other knee! Alas, the tide was in, so the fossil hunting had to wait until we had had a look round the town.
We found some shops filled with spectacular fossil finds to give us an appetite for bashing away at a few rocks!
Then the tide - or most of it - went out and we set off, clambering over the breakwaters and falling into deep rock pools that the tide forgot to take with it...
We were heading for the dark bit of cliff at the left of this photo. By now we were all knackered and the tide had gone out far enough for us to walk round instead of climbing over the breakwaters. [puff!] [pant!] Thank you tide...
Signs warned that the cliffs are dangerous and liable to fall at any time. It didn't seem to be worrying people all around who were smashing away at them with geologists' hammers. We hadn't come scientifically equipped and instead rooted around at the masses of already fallen rock that make up the beach. Every now and then there came a shout and the sound of sliding rock and once or twice chunks bounced off the back of some twit who was trying to tunnel into the wall with all his might... There were lots of fossils to be found actually, but most had been there long enough for the tide to smooth the detail away a bit. I did find a quite large chunk of rock that quite obviously had a bone running through it, but it was far too large to attempt to smuggle off the beach and too heavy to carry anyway!
And then we came across this huge chunk of rock with the fine, though badly sea-worn fossils. Logic pointed to two ammonites that had died quite close to each other - perhaps they were sweethearts or related or something? But of course there is the tantalising possibility that they were the nostrils of the huge Gruntodon, all straight hair and curly teeth, that in the old stories does not get a single mention at all... I got Dad to sit near them to show the size and another rare glimpse of his knees...
And then of course we had to walk all the way back, but at least it was in sunshine this time. We were still wildly optimistic and picking up odd bits of rock. I found a rare blue piece with jagged edges. I could just make out the primitive brand that some caveman had etched onto the neck of this once-beautiful creature. It said "venir of Babbaco..."
But I did find a genuine fossil. It was a small ammonite. Very small and somewhat broken. In fact it could have been a snail... But it was pocket sized and could be brought home and still to this day (at time of re-writing this article, it's April 2023) it makes up a small part of my fossil collection. Well, I mean the fossil is small. It makes up 100% of my entire fossil collection... By heck! And it's only Sunday! How can this holiday top that?!? Oh... it can... it can...
