Introduction
This is the second set of pictures from my summer holiday in Devon in 2014. (Part 1.)
Tuesday
In the morning Ian took us to visit a small National Trust property (conveniently near a petrol station with LPG): Loughwood Meeting House, a 17th-century Baptist chapel.
Then we went to take a look at nearby Shute Barton. It’s a medieval house; closed for visitors but we admired their fancy gatehouse before taking a look in the nearby parish church.
In the afternoon, Mum and Ian went swimming in the sea in Lyme Regis. They somehow both survived this fate. In the meantime, Dad and I wandered around a bit while guarding their belongings.
Then we went for another walk around Lyme.
In the evening, we went for another short walk locally.
Wednesday
The morning dawned interestingly misty. We (my family and Chris) set off walking westward, identifying wild flowers as we went.
Some people did appear to be playing golf, which seemed entertaining given the weather.
At Seaton we crossed the river Ax on a bridge which claims to be the oldest standing concrete bridge in Britain. (They’ve built a slightly more modern-looking one for road traffic.) We continued along the seafront.
At the end of the promenade, the path was supposed to follow an old road along the clifftop. It had actually been diverted inland along newer roads, the old one having fallen into the sea.
The path did still run near the cliff edge some of the way and there were points where you could look out and hear the sea - but not see it. It was far enough down that it disappeared completely into grey. We only saw the water when the path started to drop toward the beach at Beer.
Beer is an actual place. We ate our sandwiches (during which time the mist finally disappeared), had a quick look in a small museum, admired the stream flowing beside their road, and visited the parish church / book sale. But we didn't go into a pub.
On the way back, we consulted tide tables and decided to try walking below the cliff, instead of above it.
Overall the beach was clear, but at one point the sea still came up against some slippery-looking-rocks for ten metres or so. We tried waiting for the tide to drop.
Then we gave up waiting, took off shoes and socks, and waded through.
Cleaning and drying our feet in order to put shoes back on was a bit of a challenge, but we eventually continued back to Seaton.
We stopped in a coffee shop for cream teas. At least, the others did; I had chocolate cake and a J2O, on account that I like neither cream nor tea. Seemed a nice coffee shop; strangely, it also sells craft stuff.
After that, a brief visit to Seaton tram station to admire the trams. The track of the railway that used to go to Seaton was bought up by an enterprising tourism business, and now carries passengers on half-scale electric trams.
From this point, Dad got the bus back, and the rest of us walked. It was an interesting return journey; we went the same way, but it looked quite different in the sun.
Thursday
I can’t remember what the others were doing, but we diverged on Thursday morning. Dad and I walked into Lyme Regis along an inland route that passed the railway viaduct and led to Uplyme. (A village which is, unsurprisingly, up the hill from Lyme.)
In Lyme we met various others and looked through the town museum, which is quite interesting and really packed full of stuff. Then we sat on the beach to eat lunch.
After that, a few of us (I think the family plus David) went to the beach west from Lyme to go fossil-hunting.
Then we got to see a minor landslip all of our own. Without any obvious trigger, dirt started falling from the cliff ahead.
By the way, finding small fossils was actually quite easy. Taking them home was quite another thing; they were mostly in rock so weak that you can pull it apart with your hands (and it falls apart if you drop it).
Friday
Friday was the end of the holiday; we had to go home. But we had a quick look around Axminster while waiting for the train.
That’s it! (And a very nice holiday it was, too.) Thanks for looking at the pictures.