Thanks to the ongoing Covid-19 crisis I’ve been forced to cancel three overseas trips, the most recent of which would have been a 10 day family holiday to Majorca. This particular cancellation happened at the 11th hour with little warning and therefore I had to react quickly and find a suitable location in the UK to both entertain the children and get some well deserved R&R.
I’ve got some friends that live in East Devon so it was decided that we would spend a couple of days catching up with them before heading to a holiday park in Dawlish Warren – a part of Devon I hadn’t been to for some 12 years. Selfishly one of the main reasons for choosing this particular location was so I could cycle the Exe trail – an almost completely off road cycle route that goes up and down both sides of the Exe estuary.
Starting from the Dawlish Warren side it’s only a couple of miles before you join the coastal path which is mixed use, shared between cyclists, runners, and people walking the route. There is a funky ramped bridge that crosses over the rail line just past Powderham castle. The route is predominantly tarmac/asphalt all the way up the Dawlish Warren side. On my particular jaunt I headed up further along the route all the way into Exeter (some 10 miles away from my starting point), before turning around and heading back to Topsham where I switched sides of the estuary and followed the trail to Exmouth.
This side of the trail does have some public roads around Topsham as you pass through a largely residential area before rejoining private paths. This side of the estuary is much hillier and there is more significant navigation to be done as pathways split off to other locations. Large parts of the path are on a raised boardwalk through the nature reserve with the occasional bridge thrown in for good measure.
The route into Exmouth follows a major road in albeit along a mixed use path. Once into Exmouth you have the choice of taking a passenger ferry back to Starcross, or you could as I did which is to turn around and head back up to Topsham to cross back over the Estuary and head back the way you came. On my way back to the crossing I started to suffer some mechanical issues which culminated in not being able to change up to the big ring on the front of the chainset. I stopped, fiddled, and managed to get in to the big ring but then knew I’d never be able to change back up if I changed down so hills were going to be tougher heading back.
The route is very scenic on both sides, easy to navigate and I managed a near 40 mile route around including the extension into Exeter within just over 2.5 hrs including some stops and my mechanical challenges.
