September 5, 2022
In Exmouth: Mutter’s Moor OAB
We’re totally open minded about how we’ll spend our time here in Exmouth, depending on what breaks the weather gives us. We’re pleasantly surprised this morning to see that it’s giving us a pretty large one today that looks like it could hold until midafternoon - cloudy and very windy again, but hopefully dry.
As an aside here, Rachael found a new weather forecasting app for us to consult: metoffice.gov.uk. So now we have three advisors in our cabinet: Weather.com, YR, and Met Office. When we need a weather condition we can shop around to see which gives us the best deal and go with that. Met Office tells us we should be good until about 3 today, which is rosier than either of the other two pessimists so we choose to believe it.
And for what it’s worth, Met Office will prove to be spot on today; and in our limited experience so far it’s looking like the best of the three for this part of the world.
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Gray and very windy add up to a hiking day for Rachael, so as soon as morning digestion is done she’s off east along the coast to hike the westernmost part of the Jurassic Coast. If I thought I could take a second long hike so soon after Saturday’s I might have gone with her, but a bike ride seems more prudent. I map a 35 mile out and back to the east and along the crest of the Sid Valley, one that looks quiet and has the prospect of some nice views to the coast and east to Sidmouth. I stay around longer than Rachael so I can finish the day’s post, but by ten I’m off too.
My ride starts by biking down the promenade alongside the bay to its end at the base of the bay, to the striking red cliffs at the base of Orcombe Point, the western end point of the World Heritage coastline. Rachael will have come this way also at the start of her walk too I assume.
All three of our weather oracles agree on conditions starting out - overcast, with a 20 mph wind blowing upriver from the sea. All are correct, and it’s a healthy push biking into a fierce wind which blows stronger as I near the point. At the end I’m biking into gusts of red sand blown up off the pavement.
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Leaving the beach I angle inland, gradually climbing up quiet lanes through pasture and crop lands until I top out and drop through the small communities of Knowles and Budleigh Station and cross the Otter River. Had I stared at the map hard enough and thought about it better I could have taken a short detour to the mouth of the Otter here for some coastal views and possibly have met up with Rachael, since this was the far point of her hike.
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Crossing the Otter, it’s another climb for the next four miles. this one’s gentle at first as I follow the Otter upriver to Otterton, a pretty town that especially impresses me for its chimneys. After that though it gradually stiffens, at the end challenging me with a 17% grade up Peak Hill Road before finally cresting at the top of the ridge forming the western side of the Sid Valley.
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I’m stopped at the top catching my breath and looking around when a man of about my vintage walks by, looks at my bike and notes it’s a Bike Friday, a brand he knows of. He’s a biker himself and rides a Molton, and comments how steep the climb I’ve just conquered is - says he rode it himself a few weeks ago. We have a good long chat, discussing all the usuals as well as England and my impression of it. He’s from up north, having lived in the Yorkshire Dales and near the North York Moors. He knows Buttertubs Pass, and I earn some credit when I say I biked it while we were staying in Hawes.
We break it off when his wife walks over from the nearby parking lot to see if he’s fallen off a cliff. At the end I ask him if there’s a view down into Sid Valley if I bike ahead a bit, but if it’s views I’m after he advises me to take the footpath out into the sheep-strewn pasture across the road.
So I do, and enjoy fine views of the coast and east to Sidmouth. Later though I’ll wonder why it didn’t occur to me to ask him why he’s up here at a parking lot out in the middle of nowhere. If I had I’d have learned that it’s the parking lot for Mudder’s Moor, a pebblebed heath, and could have spent a few minutes longer up here and gone to see what a pebblbed heath even is. No doubt you’re up to speed on pebblbed heaths and know what Mudder’s Moor is, but both are new to me. It’s a shame - for just a few hundred yards more I could have seen for myself.
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I’d mapped out another ten miles in today’s ride, a spur further up the Otter River and back; but the ride has gone slower than I’d expected and I’m starting to distrust the weather so I just head back to town, leaving just enough time to stop off at the Dog and Donkey in Knowles for a pint of Gun Dog to help me through the last miles. It’s just as well I do - the sky is starting to look ominous across the bay to the west when I bike back along the promenade.
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Around five I’m taking a shower and Rachael hollers in about the weather. All hell’s broken loose - there’s thunder and lightning and it’s raining so hard that water’s washing down our window panes in waves. We have a dinner reservation at a fish restaurant a half mile away, but there’s no way we’re going out in these conditions. We’ll forfeit our reservation and maybe go for Chinese at the restaurant that’s just next door.
Then though, it tapers off substantially and I convince Rachael,we should go for it while there’s a chance. We hurriedly toss changes of clothes and a towel in a plastic bag in case we need to change and dry off when we get there, and then we’re out the door walking as fast as we can down to the waterfront.
At the waterfront, the rain stops completely and we arrive for dinner on time and none the worse for the walk. Our reservation was for a table on the veranda overlooking the bay, but we’re seated indoors because the veranda is flooded and they’ve shut it down.
Over dinner the rain and thunder returns with a vengeance; but it’s stopped again by the time we’re done eating, and for a brief moment we even get a rainbow on our dry walk back to the room. And not long after we’re back there’s another cloudburst hammering at the windows. I stop all in the timing - five minutes either way coming or going and we’d have drowned.
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Ride stats today: 25 miles, 2,100’; for the tour: 2,465 miles, 151,400’
Today's ride: 25 miles (40 km)
Total: 2,465 miles (3,967 km)
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