Seaton Trams and a Donkey Sanctuary

Monday 28 August 2023. It dawns as a summer's day and more or less stays that way. Hooray!

Before breakfast, having crossed the road from the hotel to the seafront. Today another excursion on the coach awaits us but we are not travelling very far today. We are heading for Seaton and its tramway, where we once spent a week using Seaton as a base in 2014.

We have a half hour before the tram ride. Due to a late departure it was getting towards lunch, but having stayed in Seaton before, we knew we were unlikely to find anywhere to eat and so it proved to be. So we wandered slowly looking at a very few and very closed cafes and went back to wait for our tram. As we were a coach party we had a tram of our own. Everyone else made a dive for the bottom so it was either climb the very narrow stairs or not go. I made it...

All the historical details about where and when the tramway and trams came from can be found in the 2014 articles. I'll just clarify here that only three of the tramcars were originally full size and have been cut down and the rest were all scratch built but based on actual tramcars. There's even one modelled on a Blackpool open-air Boat tram.

We reached the far end and trooped into the cafe for a cuppa and a sandwich, then a look around the station - this used to be a branch line originally - and gift shop. Then our tram came back out of its siding and the queue of people waiting to go back had to let us through due to it being a special charter. They weren't particularly happy some of them...

Then it was back to Seaton and onto the coach and a short hop to the donkey sanctuary. Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't have any great interest in donkeys. In any case after climbing up and down those narrow stairs twice over I just wanted to sit down on a bench and stay put. So Miss Franny went to give the donkeys my apologies and I found a nice nearby bench and sketched the view. Which only contained one donkey a long way away. Good, because I'm hopeless at drawing donkeys. So that weird-looking cross between a bison and an anteater is a donkey, ok? Miss Franny said one donkey had complained I wasn't interested in them but to be honest: he-aw he-aw he-aways complains, that one...

Coach Trip to Sidmouth, August 2023, Index

Devon and Dorset Break, 23-26 June 2014

A series of articles covering a short break in Devon and Dorset, taking in Sidmouth and Seaton, Beer, Lyme Regis, Wareham, Weymouth and the Cerne Abbas Giant.

Click the menu photos below to access the associated article and photographs.

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To Seaton On A Bus And Then Out Again On A Tram

Tuesday 24 June 2014. If you've been following the tale of this mini break, you will know that we left off yesterday with a hair-raising (no mean feat with me...) bus ride from Beer to Sidmouth on the South Devon coast. I see one of my readers has commented on a worrying trend - fish guts yesterday, poo the day before that... Well I can reassure my readers that today's substance of note will be nothing worse than clotted cream! Hurray for the good guys!

The bus delivered us safely to Sidmouth, where we got off at Sidmouth Triangle. This is a triangular grassed area formed by the almost-meeting of three roads. It's quite close to the town museum which we shall see in a moment. It was lunchtime and we walked down into the town, finding a spot in a tiny courtyard surrounded by craft shops and florists (and luckily, one cafe)! Miss Franny was fancying a Devon Cream Tea, but I always put the jam on first so we had a Cornish Cream Tea in Devon. No one pulled me up on it...

We walked off our lunch on the seafront and then headed back for the bus to see what time buses went back to Seaton. We stopped off for a look round the museum, with only a slightly hasty departure as masses of school kids came in with a few harrassed teachers and helpers for a trip! It was worth a look round with some mighty mammoth gnashers from real life mammoths. There was a large display of Sidmouth lace, made in the town by the ladies whilst waiting for their men to come back from fishing or sneaking off to the boozer and claiming it was too choppy.

Would you believe it, there was a double-deck bus already standing at the bus stop when we got there, so we jumped on that to go back to Seaton mid afternoon, hoping that there would be a bus stop somewhere near the Seaton Tramway terminus.

And so there was. We got off the bus with only a few yards walk to the tramway ticket office. The narrow guage tramway goes back to 1969/70 when equipment from a line that had operated at Eastbourne was moved here when road building threatened its Eastbourne site. It now has three miles of track from Seaton, through Colyford to Colyton

The route takes it alongside the River Axe with this view of the village of Axmouth. Passing places along the single-track route allow tramcars to pass each other.

Some of the cars are original full sized trams, cut in half lengthwise and then cut down to fit the guage. This down-scaling makes for an interesting time negotiating the staircases to reach the top decks! Even I at my impressive 5 feet 4 inches had to duck down severely and coming down the stairs involves a little limbo dance at the foot of the stairs! As exciting as this sounds, no one seemed to have any great difficulty managing it! The car pictured above was painted pink in support of breast cancer charities.

Others are painted in livery colours long since vanished in the cities and towns they represent. There is even a Blackpool Boat tram amongst the fleet! All of this started in 1949 as the pet project of a tram enthusiast, Claude Lane, whose company made battery-operated milk floats!

The return trip from Seaton to Colyton and back takes about an hour. You cannot stay on the tram as it reverses direction, so as to ensure anyone who has got off to walk into the town of Colyton has a fair chance of getting on a returning tram. You can of course get off and immediately join the queue which may well get you back on the same tram unless it is really busy.

Colyton itself is a 3/4 mile walk from the tram terminus. The town dates from 837 and the Saxons. The church dates from the Normans and, when I visited in 1997, a full list of vicars was displayed inside starting at the year 1258! Also in a glass case was a copy of a book of Erasmus the Dutch cleric dating from the early 1500s. Unfortunately a modern postcard was on top of it, as a label and obscured the binding which was red leather. The book was parchment and about 3 or 4 inches thick.

We didn't bother with the walk to Colyton this time because it was already late afternoon. We had a look in the station shop and then got onto the second tram to follow the one we had arrived on. Back at Seaton we walked towards the outskirts of the town to a pub that had been recommended, but when we arrived we found it didn't open for another hour and rather than wait on a dusty road we walked back into town and sampled the fish and chip restaurant which was excellent!

Then we walked up to a convenience store for some goodies to take back to the room and I noticed the golden lion over this doorway.

I suspect the lion wasn't carved especially for the hospital's League of Friends, it looks more like a pub or hotel mascot. I like the way it appears to be raising its hackles ready to spring!

Armed with magazines, chocolate bars and drinks, we were back in the hotel and sitting in the window reading for a few hours.

Devon & Dorset 2014 Index

Staying in Seaton

Monday 23 June 2014. After the delights of Sidmouth we arrive at Seaton to book into our Bed & Breakfast guest house. Then we went out to find something to eat. This wasn't too successful. We tried a pub with a beer garden and a very nice conservatory restaurant but - well, let's just say that perhaps the chef had been told to cook chips twice and thought that meant cook from start to finish the first time and then cremate them the second time. Crispy shells with nothing inside do not a good chip make... I won't be "holding court" there again... And steak in ale pie should be made with shortcrust - not sweet - pastry!

Seaton's promenade and beach were very reminiscent of Sidmouth. There was little or nothing by way of entertainment and very few people out and about. I saw a solitary turd lying on the beach, probably an irresponsible dog owner - more probably the dog... I felt a little as if people would flock to view it if I told someone...

Like Sidmouth, Seaton occupies the space between two sets of cliffs. We are looking east here towards Haven Cliff. You are not being decived - the cliffs are red at the bottom and have a layer of chalk at the top! The buildings towards this end of town tend to be houses rather than hotels.

Also like Sidmouth, at the eastern end of the gap between cliffs a river runs down to the sea. In this case it is the river Axe, but the name Axmouth has been claimed by the town on the other side of the river. It was once one of the major ports of the south east. The river mouth until the 14th century was half a mile wide but then half of Haven Cliff fell away and all but blocked the river mouth. Together with tidal drift dumping shingle from the west faster than locals could dig it away to protect the deep water entrance, the river mouth became totally blocked. Silt coming down the river instead of being washed out to sea, started to form the salt marshes that exist now between Seaton and Colyford. Before long, ships found it difficult to reach even to Axmouth, a mere mile inland.

There are Roman remains here, though they lie under the ground, deliberately buried to preserve them. The Romans recognised the importance of Seaton as a port. Later it contributed both ships and men for King Edward I when he went to war against both Scotland and France.

In more recent times the bend in the river to take it around Haven Cliff and into the sea a little further east has created this glorious view from the western side. The Axe Yacht Club sits on this corner from where I took the photo and (rather churlishly I thought) have erected a sign saying "Members only past this point". I would have thought a sign saying "If you are stupid enough to trip over a mooring cable or fall in the river, don't come blaming us..." would have been better. But probably some equally stupid judge would award damages and reinforce the idea that people shouldn't have to take responsibility for their own stupidity...

I have very little to say about this rather strange little building as I've no idea what function it fulfils. But it did catch my eye as a candidate for the best "Loo with a view"!

We walked back down the Promenade past groups of people staring downwards and poking the shingle with sticks. We arrived back at our guest house to find the owners, hurrying out with binoculars and a metal detector. "Quick! he said excitedly, "there's a turd! There's a turd!"

Of course I made that up... Our hosts at Bay Tree House were David and Sue and were absolutely wonderful. The place was spotlessly clean and had everything we could have wanted from a B&B, including some of the tastiest bacon I've tasted in a while! Our room is two floors up, with the open bay window.

And this is the view from it!

Devon & Dorset 2014 Index

Blue Postcards

Miss Franny and I had a ride out to GB Antiques at Lancaster this afternoon and wandered round in search of old postcards.

I was really in search of old Blackpool postcards and whilst there were a few they were not as old as I was looking for and I came home without any.

But I wasn't totally empty handed. I found a couple of old cards that took my fancy and there was a distinct colour bias about them!

This is The Chine at Seaton in Devon. The black and white photograph has been coloured with a touch of the old blue. But not the old red, green, yellow or brown that might have added a certain something... Rather strange!

Even the artist seemed to have been somewhat frustrated and has decided arbitrarily (writing that seemed a good idea until I realised I had no idea how to spell it...) to colour a lady's dress the same colour as the sky and sea. Hope she doesn't fall in - she'd be instantly lost!

The other postcard I bought has a humourous nature and again the black and white photograph has been given a spot of colour from the same tin as the Seaton postcard.

Unlike the other, this postcard has been through the post. Sent by "S.H." on 25 September 1905, the message reads:

Dear Minnie don't they look happy by the moonlight your Aunt keeps a bit better. Love to all S.H.