Saturday 08 April 2023
I have been eyeing up the East Devon Way ever since JC and I bumped into a couple when we were walking the Sid Valley Ring who mentioned it. I tracked down the guide book but never quite found a time to do it. I'd been contemplating doing it in a single 3/4 day stretch (it's 64 km, 40 miles) but realised our leave was usually otherwise spoken for. Easter weekend is perfect to start this as we can walk for some of it but still have time to do other exciting things such as a dump run, weed the garden, move my work gear back into the study (hurrah) and try to fix the toilet seat (it was glued on!).
Anyway, having two cars it was easy - we drove to Harpford Common and left a car, then drove to Exmouth and left the other one. A ~17 km walk between the two.
The walk starts near the Point at Exmouth, but we couldn't find anything that said "here's the beginning" so I plumped for this sign.
We started walking up the east side of the Exe alongside the railway. Very exciting when a train went past!
We went past Lympstone and into A la Ronde. Annoyingly, unlike other National Trust properties, you have to enter to buy a coffee, so JC (who is a member) went in and bought me a take out so we drank our drinks in the carpark. Mind you, it was a lovely day to stand just outside A la Ronde, see glimpses of the Exe and enjoy coffee in the sun ;-)
The walk then took us around the northern edge of Exmouth and we appreciated getting away from suburbia into Lympstone Common and onto the heathland. We passed Black Hill quarry which is now disused and being re-wilded by the RSPB.
Lunch was at Four Firs,
then we walked up to Woodbury Castle.
Past the castle we traversed Woodbury and Colaton Raleigh Commons before finishing off at Hawkerland Valley with its ponies. I did like the fox and hare roof thatch addition to this property at Morish Cotley.
Day two beckons, hopefully Easter Sunday. Stay tuned readers.
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