The South Devon Coast

Today, we had planned to take a trip out to Penzance. For a variety of reasons, that trip was cancelled and replaced with a trip to a good bit of the South Devon coast.

We began our travels for the day in Dawlish, a lovely little town a short train ride away from Exeter. It is just big enough to garner main-line trains stopping there. We spent about two hours in Dawlish itself. We walked along the (artificial) brook that runs through town, and we saw the waterfowl sanctuary. We got sandwiches at a local café, then got drinks at the Boots next door, and sat down by the brook and watched the black swans while we ate. Next, we walked up to some gardens at the top of the town, and then we headed back to the train station to catch a train out to Dawlish Warren.

Dawlish Warren is a nature preserve that our guidebook describes as a large collection of sand dunes. Apparently, there have been some problems with erosion of the dunes, because they have planted lots of grass and other ground cover on the dunes recently. Some of it was still fresh enough for there to be signs warning visitors to keep off. We didn't see much in the way of wildlife, but we did get lots of sand in our shoes!

After Dawlish Warren, we proceeded up to the next station on the line back to Exeter, Starcross. Starcross is a small village across the Exe from Exmouth, and is famous for, as nearly as I can tell, absolutely nothing. We strolled around town for about 40 minutes, and made a quick stop into a Spar to buy a bag of chips. From Starcross, it was about a 14-minute ride back to Exeter St. Davids (we decided against making a stop in St. Thomas).

After we got back to Exeter, we had dinner at the Impy (I had a chicken burger, Amanda had soup, and we shared some onion rings). It was, as per usual, quite tasty. We plan to stay in Exeter for the next few days, until we head to Bristol on Monday to deliver Amanda to the airport for her Tuesday morning flight.