Day 2: Teignmouth to Exeter

Wednesday 24 May 2023

Oft him anhaga
are gebideð,
metudes miltse,
þeah þe he modcearig
geond lagulade
longe sceolde
hreran mid hondum
hrimcealde sæ
wadan wræclastas.
Wyrd bið ful aræd!

Swa cwæð eardstapa,
earfeþa gemyndig,
wraþra wælsleahta,
winemæga hryre.

That’s ‘The Wanderer’, from the Exeter Book, which dates from the early 10th century, and I’m quoting it in honour of our arrival in Exeter (even though we didn’t get around to seeing the Codex Exoniensis in the Cathedral Library). The riddles are everywhere — there’s a big sculpture in stainless steel on High Street — but ‘The Wanderer’ is less well known. I haven’t thought about it since second-year English at uni, but realised when I found it online that it’s clearly the source for Uthred’s tagline in Bernard Cornwell’s books, ‘Wyrd bið ful aræd!’

Anyway, we’d made sure that our fates were already decided when we set up the itinerary for the walk; but we hadn’t counted on the weather, which was brilliant and not overly hot, but not great for novice walkers when there was almost no wind and very little shade.

We all slept well at The Ness, and breakfast was very satisfactory, so we set off in a very positive mood, down the hill to Shaldon and the ferry to Teignmouth, which is advertised as England’s oldest. I had carefully researched the ferry, having been caught out on the SWCP before, but clearly had not looked closely enough, because today of all days it wasn’t starting service until 9:30 am. That wasn’t going to work, so we had to take a 1.5 km detour across the bridge. Shaldon is lovely, but I wouldn’t call Teignmouth entirely picturesque; however, the views from the bridge and the old toll-house made nice photos.

Our decision not to walk to Dawlish Warren yesterday paid off because we decided that there was nothing interesting in walking through Teignmouth and slogging over the headland, so we caught the train to Dawlish and walked from there. It was certainly a pretty walk: the sun shone and the sea looked inviting, but it was clear that it was a terrible lie as not even the hardy poms were doing much in the way of swimming.

Simon was having issues with his knee, I had for the first time pulled up a bit lame as was struggling (I later discovered that I’d put on thicker socks and not loosened the laces on my boots, so I had actually bruised myself the previous day); but we walked on around Langstone Rock where Brunel had punched through the headland in his imperious way. Dawlish Warren seemed like a giant caravan park, although I think they prefer to call them holiday parks, with their rows of cabins on wheels. Nothing on God’s earth would persuade me that I would want to stay in such a place or that it would pass for anything approaching a summer holiday place. I think it’s distinctly possible that the detention centre on Manus Island was modelled on the English holiday park, so why Suella Braverman wants to send the ‘illegals’ to Rwanda is unclear. She could just punish them by condemning them to holiday cabins, with their tacky surroundings, piped music and sunburned refugees from the Midlands…

Lunch became an issue, and the path was offering us very little, so we found a pub in Starcross that offered a meal, albeit at the cost of nearly an hour. This was not our usual mode of walking, so getting back on the path was a little harder. From Starcross we walked up the Exe Estuary Trail (which took us off the SWCP, as it uses the ferry to go to Exmouth), past Powderham with its castle, and onto the banks of the canal.

It was actually quite a boring walk, the brilliant weather notwithstanding, except for the local rowing club, which was getting down to some serious technical training. The canal has been continually updated since it was built in 1560 (!) and Dad told me a fairly accurate history of the waterways. It turns out that the Countess of Devon built a weir across the river in the 13th Century and charged a portage fee to the city merchants. By the time the weir was removed, the river had silted up so the merchants were forced to build the canal. Bloody aristocracy! Anyway, it was used into the seventies by sewerage barges, but now is just a recreational waterway. The most exciting part of the walk was seeing a girls’ quad crew attacked by a pair of swans after they got too close to their cygnets. They are not small birds (the swans, not the scullers)!

Sore feet, dehydration and boredom saw us catch the bus for the last three kilometres, although I think it would actually have been quicker to walk! The Turks Head is quite comfortable, but Paula and I have a seriously pokey room, as it Caz and Al’s, and we’ve made arrangements to do some room swapping tomorrow. Nice dinner at some swanky spot, but a bit pricey for what we ate; but the pub has a microbrewery, so the hydration recovery is going well, thank you very much.