Sidmouth with G-Line Coaches 2026

Saturday 8 August 2026. We are repeating a holiday taken three years ago, although this time there are only enough photos to warrant a single page due to the knackered demeanor of one of the participants (er... that would be me...) and the fact that my hands shake a bit much for taking all that many decent photos on a screen. Especially when I can't see what I'm taking on the phone screen in bright sunlight!

So with a quick sneaky (because we haven't got there yet) photo of Sidmouth promenade, we hop on a coach from local firm G-Line finding the same driver as three years ago, Andrew, in charge. The journey down was marred when a bad accident occurred ahead on the motorway, causing massive hold-ups. We pulled onto the A-roads but of course they were getting choked anyway and a poor chap at the front of the coach had some sort of brainstorm due to early Alzheimer’s and he started shouting that we men all needed to do something because our wives were being "attacked" (not quite what his words were).

Many of the women onboard were a bit frightened at this, his poor wife told us later she thought that she was going to have a heart attack because of it. Andrew, very wisely, just calmly told us what the issue with the motorway was and that there was nothing he could do that he hadn't already. As the chap was in the front seats just behind him, he must have been wondering whether the shouting at its peak may have turned violent but thankfully no. We later heard that someone lost their life in the motorway accident, so it had been the right decision to come off onto the normal roads in any case.

Sunday 9 August 2026. The following day was a trip to Exmouth and a boat trip along the coast from there almost east to Sidmouth again and back. I didn't want to put too much strain on the legs before the boat trip so we found ourselves sitting in what in Italy would be a piazza but what in Exmouth would be best called an "avoid the drunk druggies shouting and fighting each other". They were there last time as well, so three years of spoiling for ordinary folks what could be a quiet attractive haven near the indoor market...

We found our way to the queue for the boat and sat on the upper deck and I found myself sitting next to a fairly young couple from somewhere either in or near Ely, the cathedral city in Cambridgeshire. They were a lovely couple and we spent much of the journey chatting away. They were serving cream teas on the boat but we decided the risk was a bit much on a moving platform so stuck to a soft drink. Lots of cormorants and gannets and other gulls and I managed to spot a puffin sitting on the top of one of the high rock sea stacks, the first I've managed to see despite various boat captains along the east coast claiming the place was swarming with them!

On the coach as we turned back onto the coast road Andrew suddenly said, "oh there's a cliff fall in front!" and we saw a large cloud of red sandstone dust rising into the air. After our evening meal we had a wander up the coast to see evidence of several falls, but my money is on the far one jutting into the sea.

Monday 10 August 2026. The resulting effect on the sea itself is clearly seen here as the sea turned red/brown with the sandstone dust right out almost to the horizon where a sharp contrasting blue line betrays the true sea colour.

Tuesday 11 August 2026. Even the beach itself did not escape the change in colour. Though the cliffs are sandstone, the beach at Sidmouth is pebbled. The photo looks towards the west, to the cliffs of Peak Hill. Erosion of the cliff face here has also eroded an iron age fort on the hill.

My one and only sketch for the week. It was started in Sidmouth but finished once back at home. Consequently in order to remember the scene properly I always take a photograph to refer to afterwards and in this case it was the first photo in this article. Just in case you want to compare to see the obvious mistakes...

The last morning begins with a look at the hotel for the week, the Royal York and Faulkner Hotel. Like lots of large seaside hotels these days it is more of a reminder of hotels of your youth (if you are already of pensionable age) than ultra-modern. Younger people can recoil in horror or just mild fright as the clock strikes every quarter of an hour with a decisive and unapologetic set of chimes. There is Wi-Fi provided. In some cases that is "provided you are in a part of the hotel it reaches".

They were training at least three new young staff members in the dining room but they were eager to please, in some cases more so than the older established waiting staff who glared meaningfully at a jug of hot milk when we asked for more milk for our breakfast cereal. In the event it took so long we had asked again and received a jug well before the head waiter turned up with some cold milk. By then not only had we finished with the cereals but any cooked breakfast as well.

We shared our breakfast and dinner table with a lovely Irish couple who enlivened our holiday so much - thank you Pat and Mary!

She who looks after me, Miss Franny taking a last sniff at the air on the southern coast before breakfast on our day of travel back to Lancashire.

And the old gimmer himself - bloody hell, is that *ME*??? I recently got fed up of all the adverts for these hats on Facebook but they did look good and I ordered two, this blue one and a beige one to match my head. I have to say they are far more comfortable and suitable than baseball caps for such a distinguished figure as myself. Sorry... did I say "distinguished"? I meant "barely hanging together"...

Until the next time......

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Torquay with G-Line Coaches 2026

Sathurday 25 July 2026. I have a break from medical appointments for a while so today we are on a coach which will take us to Torquay for a week.

Regular readers will remember that we took this same coach holiday in May 2024. We'll visit a few different places and take a few trips which will seem new to me because I went to sleep during them last time!

I'm still running that risk but nowhere near as bad. Meanwhile I can also enjoy the scenery from the coach window as we head down the M5 motorway towards Devon. Also, as can be seen from the top pic above, I have some snazzy new caps to wear in blue and beige!

Sunday 26 July 2026. Our driver has put on an unscheduled excursion to Brixham. Unfortunately the local authority has now decided that coaches have to discharge passengers and park quite a walk away down past the harbour. The legs are far better than the last time we did this holiday but I'm not up to a sprint yet and it was a full half-hour's walk in temperatures well into the 30s before we came to the harbour, having passed by the somewhat odorous charms of the local fish processing plant. Lovely...

We were glad that the first café to be seen had room to let us sit down and I thankfully wrapped myself around a cup of tea. Blimey is that me? I look like Methuselah's granddad...

Miss Franny meanwhile is making short work of a latte...

Brixham was making the most of the weather to bring out the blooms. The last time we were down in Torbay there was a water scare in Brixham.

The replica of Drake's Golden Hind No plan exist so we don't really know what it looked like exactly but someone at least wrote down the measurements so that although the other replica in London looks quite a bit different at least they are the same size front to back and across!

There were a few craft stalls along the edge of the harbour, one an old van with a somewhat less than swarthy old sea dog selling pirate-related carvings.

Monday 27 July 2026. Dartmouth. We went from Paignton on the steam train, took a ferry over the river and then a boat ride up the river and down again to where Ian was waiting with the coach. I managed to stay awake this time too...

One of Dartmouth's older buildings.

Tuesday 28 July 2026. We have a free day and get a bus to the point where the promenade sweeps off to the right. We stop at the first coffee shop - a Costa - sitting outside on the terrace. A woman comes to sit at the next table with a small dog. "She's a bit quiet..." explained it's owner, "she was bitten by another dog yesterday." But the old Burke animal magic tempts her to come for a reassuring pat and stroke. We walk a bit further then turn to walk back, with regular rest stops where a conversation can always be found.

Wednesday 29 July 2026. Our excursion today is to Plymouth, once a regular visiting place for work, but then I never got to take a boat ride along the coast and river mouth. Our tour is to sail from close to the famous Mayflower Steps, where the Pilgrims set sail in 1620 for the New World across the Atlantic.

Our boat squeezes into it's space on the jetty. And we settle down for a hour's sail.

Also that evening we went to an excellent variety show at Babbacombe Theatre, starring Steve Laister with comedy, music, magic and dancers providing a wonderful night's entertainment.

Thursday 30 July is another free day and Ian puts on a shorter excursion to Teignmouth and Dawlish. I'm afraid I didn't take any photos that day, but once back we did get on our usual table in the hotel garden which allowed me to finish this sketch of the side of the hotel.

Friday 31 July. We take a trip up the coast to Sidmouth. Now I had booked two holidays in quick succession, so that despite having to head home tomorrow, we will be coming back down to Sidmouth the following Saturday! However this particular weekend the famous Folk Festival takes place and there were many craft stalls along Sidmouth's elegant promenade and a fair number of singers of (it has to be said) various degrees of tunefulness...

We got back to Torquay and our hotel to see a procession of three or four traction engines trundling past the hotel.

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Coach Trip to Sidmouth with G-Line

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.

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A Free Day in Sidmouth

Tuesday 29 August 2023. We have no excursion today as it's Andrew's day off so we have a free day in Sidmouth.

We walk (slowly!) up the hill to Connaught Gardens. These were developed from a cottage garden of the 19th century and were bought and developed by the local authority following the death of the own in the 1930s. The gardens were opened by the Duke of Connaught, the third son of Queen Victoria in 1934, by which time he was in his 80s.

I sat and sketched the view from the western end of the gardens where a set of white-painted steps, known as Jacob's Ladder, reach down to the beach far below. It is a shingle beach but traces of sand can be seen just at the edge of the sea. A teenaged girl was jogging up the stairs, along past my bench and then down the cliff path to repeat her circuit. "Wow, that's really cool!" she said. And proudly I suppose it must be if I can impress teenaged girls at my age...

A few spots of rain stirred us into walking back down the hill into town. We had seen a sign for a toy museum and went to have a look. I used to have one of these Merit games as a very young boy. I know I'm bigger now but even so I was surprised at just how small it was! It worked by magnets on the end of a plastic concertina scissor contraption like a trellis attached to the bottom of the lever and a fixed point somewhere between the lever and the playfield at the bottom of the box. This meant that moving the lever would magnify the movement of the magnet.

We came out of the museum back into rain and went to look for somewhere to eat. We found a little cafe in a courtyard where we have eaten before. It had obviously changed hands as there was a distinctly Asian look to the decorations, very exotic! We had a scone with jam and clotted cream each - utterly gorgeous. By the time we came out it was fine again and we walked down to the seafront and along to the cliffs at the eastern side of the Promenade, turning in to walk along the River Sid.

The weir. The path diverted through a small park onto the streets of Sidmouth.

The Swan Inn has stood here since around 1770 and is described as a traditional back street pub.

We turned left past the pub and thus came to one of the town's main shopping streets. Unable to drink alcohol any more because of the pesky medicals, we did the next best thing and went into the Old Ship Inn, now a Costa Coffee but I can remember it being open as a public house.

It dates from the 1300s (the Blue Placque says "1400s") and has known smugglers, rowdyism, so many unwashed bodies that the street outside stank so much it was just about a no-go area and rumours of a penny hang room upstairs - a room with a rope tied taut from wall to wall over which people could hang for a penny to go to sleep - and a report that someone once tried to enter with a dancing bear which caused great consternation amongst the customers!

A newspaper report of 1859 tells of the landlord being summonsed to court after a constable had visited one night to find 30 men, women and boys in the tap room with a man playing a fiddle and "girls of bad character" and people dancing. The fiddling (I'm thinking of the chap with the fiddle but...) and dancing went on until the early hours of the morning and the landlord was summonsed to appear in court. Apparently despite all these people on the premises the poor constable could produce no evidence of complaints or witnesses and the landlord got away with a fine of just two pounds, including costs!

Coach Trip to Sidmouth, August 2023, Index

Sidmouth and Budleigh Salterton

Saturday 26 August 2023. After the excitement of finding the Red Arrows were giving a display a couple of hours after arriving at Sidmouth, we woke early the following morning with time for a sniff of air before breakfast.

Sidmouth early in the morning before breakfast. There has been a little rain but it is brightening up. Our room was on the second floor with windows across from the bed with a view of a brick wall 6 feet away and another window on the right hand wall with a view of a car park where apparently there had been a fight during the night. We never heard it. In fact there was screaming and shouting a few doors down from us. We never heard that either...

There are a few people wandering about and even a few brave, or stupid, people swimming in the sea. We were to find that about half a dozen people were swimming every day in the sea around this time.

Breakfast over, our first excursion takes us to Budleigh Salterton, a small village with pebble beach and a stream running down the main street down a culvert. It's still early enough that some shops and cafes are still closed and we opt to walk down the hill from the bus stop to the beach.

Just about everybody else had headed down a side street from the coach drop-off to the cliff tops, seen in the middle distance. We reached the beach and found some colourful kayaks high up on the shingle and we have to take care walking because of the wire cables used to winch boats up the high shingle bank of pebbles from the sea.

Lobster or crab traps are piled up waiting to be baited and taken out. As they sit on the sea bed they are attached to floats, balloons or empty plastic containers painted bright colours.

Other assorted bits of fishermens' gear was on the beach, tubs, various sticks, bits of tarpaulin and a barrier to fool the fish/crabs/lobsters into taking any signed diversions into the traps...

We had a cuppa in a cafe as we climbed back up the hill from the seafront and then spent the few minutes left before the coach came to pick us up, sitting on the nearby cliff top overlooking the sea. I had forgotten my hat and the sun was fierce on my stylishly bald head. I put my hood up and did my monk impression - I'm a green monk - a recycledtine...

Coach Trip to Sidmouth, August 2023, Index

Sidmouth by Coach

We join a coach trip for a week in Sidmouth, Devon. We are picked up from our doorstep (well... end of the drive to be more precise) and are taken to join our main coach for the week a couple of miles away on the main road. We find our driver is Andrew who drove us to Halifax last year to see the Piece Hall and he was excellent throughout.

"We have to keep to a strict schedule going down," he told us, "there's an air show in Sidmouth and they are closing the road in front of the hotel at 3:30."

Our hotel was the Royal York and Faulkner Hotel right on the seafront. I took this photo the following morning. By the time we got there they were just about to close the road and some council employee took it upon himself to walk in front of our coach all the way down to the hotel. It is a well-known fact of course that coach drivers, being professional drivers, sometimes get an irresistable urge to mow down anybody foolish enough to ignore massive vehicles approaching them at five miles per hour...

Anyway, there were quite a few people knocking about. There was also quite a bit of rain knocking about. So once we had found our room and made sure our luggage was safely inside, we went back out and sat under the hotel balcony where we had a slightly obscured view of the sea, due to parked cars and wet people, but we able to stay dry ourselves and we had a good view of the sky where we (rightly as it turned out) expected any aeroplanes to be.

It even brightened up for a bit, then thought better of it and decided to hammer it down. We were nice and dry and waved gaily as passing bedraggled souls came past giving us ferociously jealous stares...

Even the dog in front of us over the road had a rain hat on... But as luck would have it, the rain eased off a bit and it looked as though we would get an airshow after all.

A trio of 1930s Stampe biplanes gave a display, lazily swooping, rolling and flying in formation. Only one was leaving a trail of smoke behind. A foreign lass had come to join us and asked my why there was only one trailing smoke. "Either, he's the leader or the other two have had their smoke affected by the rain," I answered, "...or he's on fire..."

Coach Trip to Sidmouth, August 2023, Index