Gorgeous red sandstone cliffs and stacks, draped in green, make a lovely start to the day, despite the heavy cloud cover.
The Otter Estuary Nature Reserve outside Budleigh Salterton is an attractive spot for early lunch. Sitting on the grass at the top of a steep path leading down to the river, I am almost bowled over by two very enthusiastic black labradors, making a mad dash down to plunge into the water.
It is a gentle walk to Exmouth, accompanied by the thunder of rifle volleys from the MOD firing range.
I am feeling good on reaching Exmouth so make a snap decision to jump on the ferry and push on to Dawlish.
There is a sign warning not to take the sea wall route into town at high tide. I am not sure why as it is very safe although probably best avoided on a windy day.
It is a long journey by train and bus back to Sidmouth and I am feeling tired and thirsty as I head into a pub. They ask for my Covid app and to my absolute horror I realise my phone is still on the bus. I have no way of getting in touch with anyone, no maps, no idea of time, and no photos. What a nightmare! The pub kindly tries a few Stagecoach South West numbers but, of course, it is impossible to speak to a human. It is getting dark by now. I will try Exeter bus station in the morning.
Postscript: The next morning I managed to find a working phone box and let Jude know that my lack of response in the family WhatsApp group was not due to me falling off a cliff. I drove into Exeter without using Google Maps, which was novel. Sadly, no phone had been handed in, so I drove home. Later in the day, with access to my PC, I used the “lost phone” feature to track my phone and could see it still happily riding the bus! Once again, I was unable to speak to anyone at the bus company so entered a display message to call me on my home number if found. I then remotely activated a sound. Two minutes later, a kind lady, Amanda Walker, called to say that everyone on the bus had searched for the source of the noise. She found my phone wedged between two seats. We agreed to meet in Exeter bus station the following week at the start of my next walk. A happy ending!
Walk distance: 17 miles.
Total distance: 472 miles.
Oh Tony! What a nightmare to lose your phone!!! So glad you got it back in the end. I loved walking along all those red cliffs. Dramatic and great for photos. I did walk the sea wall into Dawlish at high tide, and had to leave the wall for the last 100m or so because the waves really were ferocious. You’ve got an interesting section coming up. One that was tougher than I anticipated, so look forward to reading your next episode. 😄
Ah, I was lucky to choose a calm day then. I am catching up a little now that I have my phone back. I did the next two sections this week so it sounds like we had a similar experience!
Funny story about the phone especially as you could see it still riding around on the bus. Some clever thinking to get it back!
As Ruth says the sees do get very rough along there. I lived in Devon for a while and can remember taking a train on that line where the waves were literally breaking onto the side window of the train. It was hairy enough being on the train, so you certainly wouldn’t want to be walking along the wall in conditions like that. When the sea gets rough they sometimes take the line closest to the coast out of use to try and keep the trains running.
It was funny at the time although frustrating that I could not actually speak to anyone at the bus company. I did not know these “lost phone” features existed but that is the power of Google.