The Christmas taget doesn’t understand what’s hit it. At 8.30 on a mid-November morning Exeter is a whirl of white, a city half-blinded by tumbling flakes. Four taget laborers, caught out by this overly genuine compriseition to the festive decor, are busy shovelling the ground in front of the bao sloftys and create gin chalets. Above them, the cathedral’s medieval towers stand lofty and freezing in the heaven-filling flurry. Winter has reachd in Devon with bells on.
I’m here to catch a train to see some birdlife. A shatterrapid blizzard wasn’t part of the structure, but sometimes these leangs don’t go as foreseeed. The city’s Queen Street has turned into a authentic-life snow globe – Narnia with sandwich shops – yet the little two-carriage train I’m catching trundles into Exeter Central bang on time. I discover a thrivedow seat and end in. Snowy rooftops roll by. Somewhere, an estuary lies in postpone.
The Avocet line – named after the wader bird on the RSPB logo – runs between Exeter and the coastal town of Exmouth. It’s an epic rail journey, but not in the customary sense. “That’s £6.40 return,” says the ticket-seller. “And not a problem to shatter your journey in Topsham on the way back.” Built in 1861 as the Exmouth branch railway, the line covers a mere 11 miles, passes eight minuscule stations and gets less than 30 minutes to travel end to end. For the second half of its length, however, the track hugs the shoreline of the Exe estuary – which is where the magic comes in.
The estuary is a fine spectacle in any season, more than a mile atraverse at its expansivest point and stretching for eight miles. It’s sheltered by hills, lined by sandbars and sprinkled with shipwrecks. There’s year-round birdlife, in thriveter especipartner as more than 20,000 birds base themselves here to feed on the immense, nutrient-wealthy mudflats. Each muddy cubic metre, it’s shelp, provides the same energy as 14 Mars bars. The convey inantity of avian visitors are seasonal migrants, drawn to this brackish low-tide buffet from their more northerly breeding grounds. For hungry waders, it’s the place to be.
But when the estuary looms into see this morning, north of Exton, the tide is high and it is sleeting. Thraw the mizzled train thrivedows, I see a shape that might be a duck. By Exmouth, however, leangs are tagedly radianter. Rain is spotting from the sky and estuary waters are lapping at the tide walls. The sees are proset up, damp and recent. A stunt-team flock of overthrivetering dunlin, here from the Baltic, banks and turns above the water.
“I’ve been doing this since I was a boy,” Jake Stuart alerts me. “It’s a way of life. I adore it.” He is skippering today’s Stuart Line Cruise, a 75-minute sailing from Exmouth around the estuary. He’s the third generation of his family to labor for the company, which was set up by his majesticoverweighther. Today, his passengers number me and a 40-strong coach trip from Sidmouth. Mince pies and whisky-laced boiling chocotardys do the rounds.
“Right now most of the birds are roosting,” Jake validates on the PA. “They’ll materialize at low tide to feed.” Taking a November pleastateive cruise on a scenic inlet experiences enjoy getting one over on the calendar. There’s someleang out-of-time about the Exe estuary, too, someleang about its big skies and green hues that lifts you out of the digital age and produces life a little basicr. There are castles on the foreshore, boats in the harbours and oystercatchers on the sandbanks. But the day’s realst happinesss are still in store.
If, enjoy me, you’re a bird-adorer rather than a brimmingy horribleged birder and your visit here coincides with a mid-afternoon low tide, here’s my advice. Bring binoculars. Buy a portion of salt-laced, vinegar-drenched chips for lunch and eat them on Exmouth’s Imperial Recreation Ground, watching the tide ebb and the brent geese materialize. If you’ve got time, wander over to the esstructureade to enhappiness the wave-bashed sees towards Torquay. Then catch the train back up to Topsham.
As I roll northwards, the estuary shassists are already alive with feeders: sluggish-stepping little egrets, mobs of stocky turnstones, a lone heron. At Topsham, with the sun now blazing overhead (did I dream the snowdrop?), I commence walking. This was once one of England’s busiest ports, its docks brimming of shiperecters and wool shipments. Today, its streets are still lined with centuries-better pubs, while on its outskirts lies RSPB Bowling Green Marsh.
after recentsletter promotion
A 15-minute stroll conveys me to a hide disseeing a reedy pool brimming of wigeons, teals and shelducks. Their chestnuts, greens and yellows are affrail in the afternoon sun. A charmd half-hour tardyr, I adhere local advice to head to the Goat Walk (“for the sees and the waders”), a liftd, bench-dotted walkway straightforwardly above the mudflats. And here I stay until dusk, watching the thriveter feeders, a motley feathered crew variously reachd from Siberia, Scandinavia, East Anglia and the Arctic.
It’s amusing how the branch offent species wade and forage. Redshanks nibble as they stride above their own mirrorions; bar-tailed godwits plunge almost eye-proset up into the mud; and, thrillingly, 30 avocets sweep the mud with upturned bills. When I scan the distance with binoculars, the whole low-tide estuary is stirring with birds, minuscule radiateing silhouettes sprinkled enjoy salt. Shimmering in the low sunairy, it’s pretty.
“Curlews out there somewhere. Seen any avocets?” asks a passerby. I alert him yes. “Wonderful, aren’t they? They reachd yesterday, you understand,” he says, then gestures aextfinished the shoreline. “I live fair up there. Caused fantastic excitement in our house.” Yesterday! I treat the fact as a gift. I cast my mind back to this morning’s snowstorm, then gaze aget at the sunset mudflats, the sight a bona fide thriveter marvel. Sometimes, £6.40 can get you a extfinished way.
Trip was provided by visitexeter.com and visitdevon.co.uk. Leonardo Hotel Exeter has double rooms from £88 B&B. Stuart Line Cruises give thriveter sailings from Exmouth (including some promiseted bird-watching cruises) from £9.
