Is Exmouth worth a visit?
Seaside town in South Devon with most of your traditional trappings. The estuary on which it sits is a haven for boating types, providing an eye-catching and enticingly sandy surrounding.
What to see and do in Exmouth?
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Exmouth Beach & The Maer
One-and-a-half mile of golden grit leads to a local nature reserve with an equally local name. It all makes for a rather pleasant tiddly-om-pom-pom down the prom-prom-prom, well, the Esplanade, as it happens.
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The Strand & Central Exmouth
The Strand, Exmouth Market and a square as big as Trafalgar might have you think you're in fancy London. That's where the comparison ends, however, the vendors in the centre sell things people actually need.
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Exmouth Marina
Colourful weatherboarded residences surround the revitalised marina, and the nautical theme continues with boat trips nearby. They're off for a closer look at the Jurassic Coast, of which Devon has a small stretch, so no, Dorset can't claim all of it.
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A La Ronde
Away with your octagons, this 16-sided construction just north of town is the former home of a pair of late 18th-century cousins. They explored Europe and decorated the hexadecagon with trinkets from their travels, but, get this, they were ladies, quite pioneering for the time. Hey, it was raining that afternoon.
This part of Devon is separated from the holiday hotspots by the estuary of the River Exe, naturally, and requires a bit of a diversion. Let's just hope the rest of the traffic on the M5 don't have the same idea - off we go...
Here is down on the coast in South Devon and the mouth of the River Exe, naturally, so it's easy enough to find even for this pair of navigational ninnies. This is estuary territory making for a sandy situation, all one-and-a-half mile of it, and some if you're prepared to head around a headland.
No time today, however, to get golden grit where you don't want it, this is a simple 'overnighter', and, besides, there's a promenade that looks like it needs a right good walking down.
It's reassuringly old-skool along most of the one-and-a-half mile of the promenade and nowhere no more so than at the Pavilion Theatre.
Impressionable turns of Shaky Stevens and Zed Leppelin aren't strictly a summer thing although Jackson Michael might well have been packing 'em in during June and July back when it was still OK to do so.
Those are the months the town really starts to jump, they say, and when the Harbour View will need extra books of raffle tickets to confirm the purchase of your fry-up.
Not that it's quite so quiet in what's nearly into October and these Premier-like lodgings are, for once, unable to accommodate.
The crowds aren't thought to be down to deliberate, and not accidental, tickers of Queen Victoria Jubilee Clock Towers. This appeared on or around 1897 for some diamond work on that front, and there was talk of one 10 years earlier for inferior golden work, but it can at least be said it's not running late, these days.
There may be no room at the Premier Inn, so it's up onto the Beacon where a few overnight accommodators still operate from a fine stretch of townhouses with views of the sea.
A view of the sea there is indeed, it's there between the land and the sky, but no Sydney Opera House, Hanging Gardens of Babylon or herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically across the plain, as one might expect down here in South Devon.
Lovely stuff, so far, but things go all hipster at whoever Mickey is's Beach Bar and Restaurant, and what's believed to be called a 'parade' of outlets.
Cupcakes and coffee are very much of the artisan variety and £25 at the time of writing for an 'Indonesian' veggie curry. Isn't that just taking the Mickey, whoever he is?
Mickey, by the way, is now known to be Michael Caines, not that one, a familiar face on TV to foodie types and whose fine-dining offering at the nearby Lympstone Manor is recognised nationwide, by foodie types.
The bar and patisserie, however, can now be filed in the permanently closed category, but at least it explains why the coffee and cake were so good.
There doesn't look to be too much life beyond, not unless you need rescuing at sea.
Intrepid types, though, can continue over the headland to a couple of viewpoints of interest and collapsing cliffs, not shown, before more sand but this time with a blue flag.
Not everything is so well-tended shrubbery-wise and there's something much wilder just beyond Mickeys. The Maer is a local nature reserve with an even more local name and is best described as sandy heathland.
That makes it a suitable site for skylarks who can be heard and seen ascending then descending then ascending then descending etc, when in season.
It's bordered by a cricket pitch and that yet-to-be-fathomed association of pirates and the type of golf that's never quite as crazy as advertised.
Having already mentioned larks on a downward spiral, so this is what Russell Brand is up to these days, eh?
That looks to be all one-and-a-half mile of the promenade done, so it's a colourful detour dodging raindrops towards town to see what's being offered there.
Why, there's only a square nearly as big as Trafalgar, and, get this, it sits on a similarly named Strand.
It might have the whiff of a Wetherspoon™s in size and interior design, but they're a far craftier bunch if you peer closely at the pumps. The young chap behind the bar is keen to chat, a little too keen to be honest, but here is ideal for a nightcap after some fine dining, if Prezzo™s is your benchmark, that is.
Parts of the centre could, sorry Exmouth, just about be anywhere but there's enough of an identity to make this pair of moochers nod in approval.
One thing that couldn't just about be anywhere, though, is Exmouth Market, even if that's not true because there's a better-known one in fancy London.
Not quite so many hipsters here, however, with most of the outlets focused on items people actually need, and the dinosaur outside is a hint to the famous Jurassic Coast.
Dorset is the majority shareholder but South Devon has a not-insignificant claim and it all starts just past that headland if you've been paying attention?
The excitement of a random tandoori in a random UK town always delivers, as will Namaste if you give them a call.
A handful of heavy-on-the-ginger Nepalese specialities that head down into Northern India before arriving at your standard, British high street fayre. No Bhuteko Masu on the menu, but good enough if not quite as good as gushing advising trippers suggest.
It's hoped that a party of golfers, one of whom appears to be in photographic memorial form, aren't staying at the Manor Hotel. They're three pints in and the poppadoms haven't even arrived yet!
This area is particularly tidal so it comes as no surprise to find a marina for those not willing to walk across wet sand to embark on a voyage. There's an inevitable, modern housing development with a handful of fleshpots, but it's colourfully done and wouldn't look out of place in Scandinavia, say?
That's in complete contrast to the original housing stock and makes it some of Exmouth's prime real estate. SlyBob are slightly seduced, although Pickford™s won't be getting a call no time soon because, being on a budget, a Juliet balcony isn't a real balcony, really.
Besides, they were all bought off-plan and function as second or holiday homes or Airbnb™s, probably, whatever the difference between those last two is.
Remember the octagonal house craze of the 1850s, popularised in North America but adopted to an extent over here? No? Well, stuff them anyways because here's a, get this, 16-sided one and A La Ronde is a much better name than the hexadecagon house, although reading it back we actually prefer that.
A promenade's length north of town, it was built for and paid for by a pair of wealthy cousins who were not long back from a European Grand Tour in the 1790s. The shape is influenced by the similarly shaped basilica they saw in Ravenna, they say, and it's packed full of their souvenirs, whoo-hoo!
That includes a shell grotto and staircase you're no longer allowed up and into, and of the kind last seen in Margate despite these ones being largely of the Mediterranean variety.
There's something made of the fact these ladies, yes they were ladies, were intrepid in the exploration department, even if the trip was the equivalent of an exclusive all-inclusive, really, funded by a father who got rich on the wine of the time.
It's National Trust™-run, boo, so you'll have to part with some pounds, but it's quite a piece of work and they'll let you wander ronde the garden. Hey, it's handy when that rain refuses to fully rein itself in, and when it's also a little too early in the day to head to where SlyBob need to be next, but that's another story.
Meanwhile, back in Exmouth, there's a cruise to get a closer look at the Jurassic Coast, although that appears to involve focusing on fossils in cliff faces through binoculars for nearly three hours.
A far better bet is a shorter sailing out into the dramatic estuary of the River Exe and Dawlish Warren Spit, just about shown.
Despite being not much more than spitting distance, this sandy National Nature Reserve, no less, is a 20-mile diversion by motor vehicle. If you're lucky, you might spot a choo-choo, but this ain't no chuff-chuff, not shown.
The stretch of mainline track famously hugs the coast, and when it's not been washed away carries passengers all the way between Aberdeen and Penzance.
That trip, by the way, takes on average around 13 hours, which is nearly as long as some second-homers have been heard complaining about the time to drive from West London in August, eh?