Monday 2 November 2020

Exploring East Devon #4 :: Sidmouth

Hi there everyone 😀 

As we head for another month of 'lockdown', in the hope that we can reduce the spread of Covid in time for Christmas, it may sound frivolous ... but I have a bit of sunshine and seaside for you today. 

It was the first Friday of our two weeks in Devon back in September and we thought we would give Sidmouth another try, in the hope that it wouldn’t be anywhere near as busy as it was when we last attempted a visit.

Well, it was still fairly busy, but nothing like it had been the last time we drove through, so we decided to park up and see what was on offer.

It was another glorious day and we parked up by the lifeboat station, which is at the Eastern end of the seafront and the plan was to have a good old meander along the front to see what we could find ...

The above photo is the view looking towards the east and the below is west ... the way we would be walking ...

It was another absolutely glorious day and it was lovely to be out and about in the warm sunshine.

These are the old balconied properties overlooking the sea at the eastern end of the seafront ...

We were pleased as punch to find that there was far more to Sidmouth than initially met the eye and as we came to the end of the promenade we decided that we would carry on walking along The Millenium Walkway ...

We were so glad we did. It was just beautiful along here. The long wide beach was lovely and sandy and the redness of the cliffs was just so vibrant ...
The walkway took us round the coast to Jacob's Ladder beach, somewhere that we hadn’t really thought would be on our agenda, the sound of the ladder putting us off somewhat ...
Well, the beach was just stunning ...



... and I couldn't wait to get my toes in the sand ...

... and to have a paddle ... with this as my view, looking back across the beach and up to the Connaught Gardens ...

Eventually I managed to drag myself away from the sea ...
... and whilst we couldn't face the walk up the hill to the gardens, we decided to retrace our steps along the walkway and double back along the road, where we passed some very grand old hotels ...

We had no idea what to expect in the gardens, we hadn't even known they were there. They were an absolute delight ...
... with plenty of autumn colour ...


... lots of spots to sit for a while ...

... and the most spectacular of views over the coast from the path running along the outside of the gardens ...


On the most glorious of days it really was the most idyllic spot.

It was time to retrace our steps back along the promenade, right back to where we'd started, hoping that we'd get to spend more time in Sidmouth during the rest of our break ...

I knew I'd need to paddle on that beach again 😀

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3 comments:

Thanks for taking time to comment on my blog. I love to hear what people think about what Martin and I have been up to.