Day 1: Totnes - Sidmouth - Alma Mater

September 6, 2024

Day 1: Totnes - Sidmouth

I know how to choose em

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The day before I was about to set off, it rained heavily and continuously all through the afternoon and evening. "Surely", I thought, "there can't be much more water in the clouds" - my hope was that it would be genuinely rain itself out, and the wet weather that was forecast for the next few days would pass over.

After work I gathered everything together with the usual scramble, then hurried out to the station - which even though is only 500m away from my house involved me getting rather wet. I was actually lucky because I misremembered the time on my ticket and so was expecting the train in 10 minutes later than it was. Aside from the bike carriage not being physically accessible from the short Hayle platform I boarded without mishap and had a quiet ride over the Tamar into Devon.

Pulling out of the station, I found I had no real trouble climbing the 10%+ hill up from the Dart and into Bridgetown - reassuring, as I'd done almost no training for this hilly ride and hadn't ridden the loaded bike for some months. I had a nice evening with my Mother and slept well. To my amazement, the day was almost clear when I woke up! I got going around 9am.

The loaded Shift ready to go. You can see the ground is wet but it's not a bad day at all. Just for fun I'm keeping the Cornish sticker on as I ride through Devon!

The mist hangs over the hills above the river Dart, but it's not raining and that's good enough for me.

I'd already effectively climbed out of Totnes the night before, so it was a fairly easy escape of the town to the east and through Berry Pomeroy. All was well and I made good time to the hamlet of Afton. I felt really strong on the hills.

It was here that my complacency and idiosyncratic planning got the better of me. There is no straightforward route from the Dart valley to the coast, and indeed no obvious way around the coast until you reach the Exe estuary. I'd therefore come up with a rather convoluted route, involving a considerable number of little-used tracks, that I thought would be direct and keep me away from traffic.

It started well enough...

All the best lanes have grass in the middle

I was still enjoying myself at this point, and rode through this ford

As I got deeper into the terrain north of Marldon, the going became seriously rough. It was difficult to stay upright on narrow and muddy tracks, my clothes and arms were torn by brambles, and the grades became punishing - topping 15%, and likely 20% before my instruments stop being able to measure progress. Eventually I was compelled to push, half-lugging the bike up steep, stony ways while sweat poured into my eyes.

Why did I keep going, considering the general quietness of the roads? Well, despite these exertions, I still felt remarkably good - and it was in the back of my mind that if I could handle this, the flatter and well-surfaced stages would be a cakewalk in comparison. There was also my traditional pig-headedness that has seen my (literally) carry the bike and panniers up a Polish mountain and, um, once try to ride through a waist-high stream.

Of course I didn't factor that these efforts were diminishing my store of stamina. My progress was slow: it took my 90 minutes to get to Kingskerswell, and another hour to get to the Teign estuary at Shaldon. I'd barely made a dent in South Devon and was already getting tired.

With fresh legs, these sorts of lanes didn't look too bad, even loaded

Some nice views along the way distracted me. You can see Dartmoor glowering in the distance.

This was pretty bad, but it got even worse than this

After what seemed like an age, and after repeatedly playing peek-a-boo with the sight of the estuary popping up between the hills in the distance, I descended to the Teign at Ringmore and made short work getting to the low bridge running across its mouth. Geologically speaking, these rivers are Rias or submerged river valleys. Because none of this landscape was ever glaciated, the hills are modest but extremely steep, and when travelling parallel to the coast there's little alternative but to labour up and down them.

After crossing the Teign (pronounced "Teen") I had to climb up the other side, through the small town of Teignmouth (pronounced "Tin-muff"). There are yet other place names derived from this river which use a third vowel sound: Kingsteignton (pronounced "Kings-Tane-tn"). It's these sort of word games I pondered while climbing the steep hill on the other side. I was determined to keep on pavement from now on so the going was a little easier.

The Teign estuary and the trestle bridge crossing its mouth

Looking over the bridge to Teignmouth. The road itself is quite narrow, but the bridge is reasonably cycle-friendly as bikes can use the pavement on either side.

Weather still holding out, I began to feel a bit revived

The main road between Teignmouth and Dawlish is pretty bad traffic-wise, so I was compelled to climb up to the hillside. From Dawlish though I could finally descend to the coast and follow it more closely. The cycle path along this stretch to Dawlish Warren, and on to the Exe estuary, has been greatly improved since I last cycled this way over 10 years ago - and I largely had it to myself.

I had checked out whether the Exmouth ferry would be running last night and had got my cursing out the way after seeing it was cancelled right up until the weekend because of the weather. I poked my head around the station at Starcross anyway just to check, and the lack of ferry was confirmed by a (refreshingly unambiguous) sign.

This is a good cycleway! Had it to myself on this wet weekday

The GWR running on the perilous rail line right next to the sea, and an advert for the "Cockwood Mudfest". A name to conjour with.

Cockwood can't really compete with the beautiful and evocative name of "Starcross", but it's a very pretty place.

The weather too much for the ferry (or, more likely, just no demand)

Being forewarned I had several backup plans, the first of which was to head up the Exe estuary to see if the Topsham ferry was running. Incredibly, this little metal tub is actually a municipal service run by the city council, and would cut off a good 10km or so.

The way up the estuary is an excellent and mercifully flat cycleway. It was a mixture of the familiar and nostalgic from my school days: Powderham castle and its ubiquitous deer and the Turf locks; and some surprisingly slick new cycle infrastructure.

As I saw the sign to the Topsham ferry jetty and pushed towards the river bank to investigate, a diminutive woman with abundant hiking gear hailed me and asked me if it was still running. She needed to get to Topsham to visit her sister, and to be fair it's a heck of a long walk around. As we shuffled together gingerly over the very slippery metal lattice of the jetty, that a couple of us wanted to cross gave us a sense of security that turned out to be misplaced: the metal tub was prominently moored by a buoy in the middle of the stream and had clearly stopped for the day. The lady was convinced it has been running earlier, but by this point it was after 2 pm so I wasn't hugely surprised it was no longer making crossings.

This didn't stop a slightly tragicomic scene where she, and then in sympathy I, attempted to call for the boatman because "he might be on board and we should try to get his attention". If he was there, he would only have been out of sight if he was lying prone at the bottom of his own boat, either practicing being dead or making a concerted effort to hide from us. I suspect he was in the pub.

Either way, clearly we couldn't cross the river here. I wished her luck and recommended she head to the Turf locks and phone a taxi - I would have to head to the lowest crossing point at the Countess Weir at the edge of Exeter.

A lot of water on the roads now, and a little falling from the sky. Wind was totally still though and it was warm, so on the flats this was actually nice cycling conditions.

Deer in Powderham Castle, historic home of the Earl of Devon (why Cornwall and Somerset have a Duke, but Devon only an Earl, I don't know).

Nice light effects on the mudbanks of the Exe estuary. That's Exmouth over there, but it's not so easy to reach.

The Turf Locks were a popular day out during the later parts of my school days.

I continued up the river, figuring that it wouldn't take much time on such flat terrain. I crossed under the motorway and soon the surprisingly diminutive Countess Weir bridge, still the main entrance to Exeter from the south, appeared.

Unfortunately then followed quite a section of bitty suburban cycling, with multiple crossings of busy roads and riding through housing estates and with traffic into Topsham. I don't really have any photos of this section because it was thoroughly unexciting.

From Topsham I started a long, well-graded on-road climb up through Woodbury Salterton up to the highest point of today on Woodbury Common, up at 175m. Unfortunately at this point it really did start to rain, so the combination of that and a fairly wicked descent on trafficked roads to Newton Poppleford means I also have no photos here. It was, however, probably the most invigorating part of the ride. Woodbury is also familiar to me from school days and some of the ridiculous playing-army that we did there.

Countess Weir bridge, the lowest legacy crossing of the Exe. It's a historic brick bridge, but still conveys most of the traffic into south Exeter - my school bus used to cross this every day, and now I had to cycle across it.

Crossing out of Exeter the other side, at Fisher's bridge

It was at this point I was getting really tired. Those first miles shoving the bike around unrideable lanes had really taken it out of me. My original intention had been to make it to the Devon/Dorset border and camp somewhere beyond Axminster in the Marshwood Vale: from here I had a chunk of coastline and probably getting on for 1000m of climbing left, and then I'd have to find a good place to wild camp. I started to come up with plans to cut the day short, figuring (not without reason) that Day 2 was under-length anyway, and given the punishing conditions it made sense to stop sooner rather than later.

In the touristic East Devon coastline between Sidmouth and Seaton, surely there would be a campsite I could stay at? After N Poppleford I got my phone out and had a look, and verified there were a few. One at Salcombe Regis was quite close and looked open, and surely on this rainy day would have space (though it also looked fancy and had no prices).

The drawback is this coastline features the same, deeply eroded valleys running perpendicular which have to be crossed as you ride parallel. Rather than do this on the busy road, I had plotted a final piece of off-roading, against my better judgement up a sketchy and apparently forgotten green lane. Did I reconsider? Well, I told you I'm pig-headed.

About half way up this steep lane, I passed what I could only describe as a perfect camping spot: an almost perfectly flat, turfy green platform, set back from the lane, "which I can only assume had been provided by the Lord for my special benefit". Next came a familiar feeling: It was only 4.30pm, I had only done 75km, and it felt pretty lame to stop here. I also was short of water for camping.

This feeling lasted about 2 minutes when I realised I had plenty of time to ride into Sidmouth for supplies, and I'd climbed 1,350m already. I have learnt from serial experience not to second-guess a perfect wild-camping spot.

The ancient green lane. I did not see another soul on this over both days.

I stopped and made a coffee, to see if I would be disturbed by anyone else using the lane and to have a think

Pleased to have a decent camp spot, I unloaded the bike and rode down (the much rougher) part of the lane into Sidmouth. It was a surprisingly short distance, but the almost impassably stony lane and steep grades meant it wasn't a popular route.

In town, I was tempted to go to the seafront and go to a pub and possibly chips, but passing a Lidl figured I'd rather stock up and return to my camp. With a ridiculous shopping basket of water, beer and blueberries -I had brought halloumi with me that I intended to fry up - I made my way slowly back up to the lane above town.

After my trip to town I took it easy, and before I knew it was already getting dimpsy. I got the tent up and sipped beer and fried up my halloumi, bothered only by a vocal owl. A lovely spot.

Today's ride: 80 km (50 miles)
Total: 85 km (53 miles)

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Suzanne GibsonA great read that made me glad to be sitting in my warm and dry living room. I love that you provide the pronunciation of the to me strange British names. Many thanks!
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2 months ago

Jon AylingTo Suzanne GibsonThanks Suzanne! Even reading it back I'm glad to be back in the warm. It does give a very damp and cold impression of Britain at this time of year that isn't usually right - September is often really warm! - but I picked a heck of a few days...
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2 months ago

Mark M.Controversially, I'd go along with you if we were talking about plimuff, but there's definitely a 'th' at the end of tinmuth. We once had a Waitrose here, you know. 😉

Glad you got to enjoy some of the Exe cycle path, looking forward to reading about the rest of the ride!!
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2 months ago

Jon AylingTo Mark M.Thanks Mark! It's worn me out almost as much thinking back on it ... more coming soon.
Haha yeah there's definitely more of the 'muff in Plimuff. I do tend to mangle 'ths' wherever I go though. Caused some amusement when I had to defend my feesis 😁
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2 months ago