The Quieter Side of East Devon
There is a version of East Devon that most visitors experience — Sidmouth, Exmouth, the honey-coloured towns along the main roads. And then there is the other East Devon, the one that reveals itself when you turn off the A-roads and follow the signs to places with names like Axminster, Colyton, and Beer. This is the quieter side: market towns with real histories, narrow lanes that lead to extraordinary coastline, and a landscape that changes from rolling farmland to UNESCO-protected cliffs within the space of a few miles.
At the centre of this quieter Devon sits Axminster. It is a small town with a famous name — Axminster carpets have been a byword for quality since 1755 — and an outsized reputation for food, thanks to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage HQ being just outside town. From Axminster, the countryside fans out towards some of the most rewarding destinations in the county: the Seaton Tramway, the fishing village of Beer, the National Trust village of Branscombe, the fossil-hunting paradise of Lyme Regis, and the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site itself.
This is a guide to exploring all of it — a day, a weekend, or a series of visits that will change the way you think about East Devon.
Axminster: Carpets, Crossroads, and Good Food
Axminster grew up where two Roman roads crossed — the Fosse Way, running down from Lincoln to Seaton, and the road from Dorchester to Exeter. There was a Roman fort just south of the town at Woodbury Farm, and by the early eighth century a Saxon minster church, which is where the name comes from; the town first appears in the record as Ascanmynster in 755. King John made it a free borough by royal charter in 1210, with a weekly market and an eight-day annual fair, and it has been a market town ever since — its prosperity built on wool, agriculture, and, from the eighteenth century, carpets.
The Carpet Heritage
On Midsummer's Day 1755, Thomas Whitty began weaving the first carpet to be made in Axminster. He had seen Turkish carpets imported from the East and marvelled at their vibrant colours, their size, and the fact that they were seamless. Determined to replicate them, he developed his own technique and created a product that became the benchmark for wealthy aristocrats across Britain.
Whitty's carpets were supplied to the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, Chatsworth House, Powderham Castle, Saltram House, and Warwick Castle. King George III and Queen Charlotte visited the manufactory in August 1789 while staying at Weymouth; the Queen ordered carpets and left a handsome sum for the workforce. Whitty's business ran from 1755 to 1835, and the craft seemed lost to the town — until 1937, when Harry Dutfield opened a new factory. Axminster Carpets still trades from the town today, holds a Royal Warrant and sells direct; the company has been through more than one restructuring over the years, so it is a survival story rather than an unbroken line.
The former original carpet factory, where Thomas Whitty founded the company, is now listed and houses the Axminster Heritage Centre, which opened in 2019 and holds the town museum, a gift shop and the tourist information point. Through the summer season it opens Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 10am to 4pm and Saturday from 10am to 1pm — closed Mondays and Wednesdays, so plan around it. It is a small but absorbing stop that gives real depth to the name you see on carpet labels in department stores across the country.
River Cottage HQ
A few miles south-west of Axminster at Park Farm, Trinity Hill Road, Musbury, River Cottage HQ has become one of the most famous food destinations in the South West. Founded by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and now marking twenty years on the site, it runs an award-winning cookery school, farm-to-table feasts and dining events, and the River Cottage Kitchen.
The River Cottage Kitchen serves seasonal food with long views over the Axe Valley, and what it runs changes through the year — at the time of writing that includes relaxed Bistro Nights and terrace barbecue evenings on summer Thursdays. The menu leans on organic produce from the farm and local growers, and the ethos of sustainability and seasonal eating runs through everything they do. For a bigger occasion, the farm-to-table feasts and dining events at HQ are the thing to book.
River Cottage is not cheap, but it is the kind of place that justifies the expense. The quality of the ingredients, the beauty of the setting, and the intelligence of the cooking make it a genuine destination rather than just a restaurant. If you are interested in Devon's food and drink heritage, this is essential visiting.
What the River Cottage Kitchen offers changes with the season, and the feasts and courses at HQ are ticketed events that sell out well in advance. Do not turn up on spec — check their website for the current programme and book.
Where to Eat in Axminster
Beyond River Cottage, Axminster has a solid food scene for a town of its size.
The Tytherleigh Arms, at Tytherleigh a few miles north of the town on the Chard road, is a former coaching inn turned cosy dining pub, serving a Sunday lunch menu built on seasonal, locally sourced ingredients. It is the kind of place where you eat too much and do not regret it.
Tuckers Arms in the nearby village of Dalwood is a quintessential village inn serving traditional bar snacks and modern English a la carte with local seasonal produce. The setting — a thatched pub in a tiny Devon village — is everything you want from a country pub.
The Lemon Plaice on Lyme Street, in the centre of Axminster, is a straightforward, unpretentious fish and chip shop — exactly the right thing after a morning on the coast.
The Seaton Tramway
From Axminster, the countryside drops south towards the coast, and one of the most charming ways to experience it is aboard the Seaton Tramway. This narrow-gauge electric tramway runs for three miles alongside the Axe Estuary and the River Coly, connecting the coastal town of Seaton with the village of Colyford and the ancient town of Colyton.
The tramway was established in 1970 by Claude Lane on part of the former Seaton Branch Line, which had closed in 1966. Today, fourteen tramcars carry tens of thousands of visitors per year along a route that passes between the estuary and the Seaton Wetlands nature reserves, offering views of the wildlife on both sides.
The journey takes about twenty-five minutes each way, and you can break it at the stops along the route. Some of the fleet is open-topped, which in good weather is the best seat in East Devon — the kind of gentle, slightly eccentric transport experience that Devon does better than almost anywhere in England.
The running season is broadly late March to October with additional dates around February half term and Christmas, but it varies year to year — check the timetable on their site before setting out. It is a proper family attraction, but it works just as well for two friends who want to do something slightly different with their afternoon.
Colyton, at the inland end of the tramway, is worth exploring in its own right. It has been described as "the most rebellious town in Devon", a reference to how many of its men joined the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685, and it has a fine medieval church, independent shops, and a handful of pubs. Take the tram to Colyton, have lunch, and tram back. It makes a perfect half-day.
The Jurassic Coast: 185 Million Years in 96 Miles
Everything south and east of Axminster falls within the Jurassic Coast UNESCO World Heritage Site — England's only natural World Heritage Site, inscribed in 2001. (It is not the UK's first: Giant's Causeway and St Kilda were both inscribed in 1986.) The site runs from Orcombe Point at Exmouth to Old Harry Rocks near Studland in Dorset, about 96 miles of coast, and spans 185 million years of Earth's history.
What makes this stretch of coastline globally significant is that coastal erosion has exposed an almost continuous sequence of rock formation covering the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods. In East Devon, the steep coastal cliffs are the red Triassic sandstones and mudstones at the bottom of that sequence — the oldest rocks on the whole coast, which is why the story reads west to east.
The South West Coast Path runs along the entire East Devon section of the Jurassic Coast, offering clifftop walks with panoramic sea views and access to beaches and viewpoints. It is considered by geologists and geomorphologists to be one of the most significant teaching and research sites in the world — which sounds academic until you are standing on the cliff edge looking at rocks that were forming when dinosaurs first appeared, and suddenly the timescale hits you.
Beer: Fishing Boats and Smugglers' Caves
South-west of Axminster, tucked into a sheltered cove on the Jurassic Coast, Beer is one of Devon's most atmospheric villages. We have written a full guide to Beer and Branscombe, but it deserves mention here because it is so integral to any exploration of East Devon's coast.
Beer's fishing heritage is still very much alive. Boats are winched up the shingle because there is no harbour — a job once done by a twenty-man capstan and now by electric winches and tractors. Fresh crab, lobster and mackerel are sold from the fishery's stall at the back of the beach, where a family-run business has been selling the catch from its own boats for decades, and several skippers run mackerel trips off the beach through the season.
The village was also one of the most important smuggling bases on the south coast, and its most notorious resident, Jack Rattenbury, became a Devon legend. The caves in the surrounding white chalk cliffs provided perfect hiding places for contraband, and the sheltered cove allowed boats to land when storms kept other fleets in port.
Beer Quarry Caves — vast underground caverns created by centuries of quarrying Beer Stone — are another compelling reason to visit. Worked since Roman times, the quarry supplied stone for cathedrals and churches across the country, Exeter Cathedral and St Paul's among them. Tours run seasonally, so check before travelling.
Branscombe: One of England's Longest Villages
Further along the coast, Branscombe is tucked into a wooded valley that runs down to a shingle beach on the Jurassic Coast. It is often said to be one of the longest villages in England — a claim no authority actually stands behind, and one that Stewkley in Buckinghamshire and Combe Martin down the coast both dispute — but it is unarguably a long, straggling, lovely one, its lanes sweeping through the valley past colourful cottages and thatched buildings.
The National Trust owns three buildings here, and it is worth knowing what each currently is. The Old Bakery was the last traditional working bakery in Devon when it closed in 1987, and the bread oven, proving trough, tins and scales are all still in place — but it is no longer the tea room it was for years. Since June 2025 it has run as a village shop and craft hub with simple refreshments, operated by a local resident in partnership with the Trust, open Wednesday to Saturday. Manor Mill is a watermill restored and reopened in 2025 after two years' work; a mill has probably stood on the site since before the Norman Conquest, though the building you actually walk into is much later, likely seventeenth century. It opens Wednesday and Sunday afternoons in season, free, sometimes with grinding demonstrations. And the Forge is an eighteenth-century thatched smithy, believed to be the oldest in Devon, still worked by a resident blacksmith with a showroom open year-round.
Branscombe Beach is a mile-long shingle beach offering beautiful views of the Jurassic cliffs, perfect for rock-pooling and fossil hunting. The coast path between Beer and Branscombe is one of the finest short walks in Devon — three miles of dramatic clifftop scenery that we cover in detail in our Beer and Branscombe guide.
Lyme Regis: Just Over the Border
Axminster's other great connection is to Lyme Regis, the famous fossil-hunting town just over the Dorset border. The two towns were once linked by a branch line railway that operated from 1903 to 1965, and today Axminster remains the nearest mainline station to Lyme Regis, with bus connections covering the six miles between them.
Lyme Regis is renowned as the birthplace of Mary Anning, one of history's most important fossil collectors and palaeontologists. The town's beaches and cliffs are among the richest fossil-hunting sites in Britain, and the Cobb — the harbour wall immortalised in Jane Austen's Persuasion — is one of the most photographed structures on the south coast. Even the stones of the Cobb itself carry fossils: the Portland Roach facing on the High Wall, laid between 1818 and 1826, is full of hollow casts of bivalves and gastropods where the shells have dissolved away. The ammonites everyone comes for are in the Blue Lias of the beaches, not the harbour wall.
If you are spending a day in the Axminster area, Lyme Regis is close enough for an afternoon visit — and the combination of Axminster's inland charm with Lyme Regis's coastal drama makes for a day that covers an extraordinary range of landscape and history.
Getting to Axminster
Axminster is well connected by train — South Western Railway services from London Waterloo to Exeter St Davids stop here, roughly hourly in each direction, and the journey from Exeter takes about forty minutes.
By car, Axminster is about forty-five minutes from Exeter via the A30 and A35. From Axminster, the coast is between fifteen and twenty-five minutes' drive depending on your destination.
The town sits at a natural crossroads, which is part of its appeal as a base for exploring. Seaton and the tramway are about fifteen minutes south. Beer is twenty. Branscombe is twenty-five, on lanes that do not reward hurrying. Lyme Regis is fifteen minutes east, and River Cottage at Musbury about ten minutes south-west. You can cover an extraordinary amount of ground from this small market town.
For a full day exploring East Devon from Axminster, start with coffee and the Heritage Centre in town. Drive to Seaton for the tramway to Colyton. Lunch at River Cottage, if the programme suits. Afternoon at Beer or Branscombe (or both, if you walk the coast path between them). This covers the best of the area without feeling rushed, and you will have earned your supper.
The Case for East Devon's Quieter Side
East Devon does not compete for attention the way Dartmoor or the South Hams do. It does not have the dramatic grandeur of the moor or the glamour of Salcombe and Dartmouth. What it has instead is depth — layers of history, landscape, and community that reward the kind of slow, curious exploration that most modern tourism has forgotten.
Axminster is a town that has been making things for over a thousand years — carpets, food, community. The Jurassic Coast is a landscape that has been making itself for 185 million. Between them lies a stretch of Devon that is quieter, gentler, and richer than most people realise.
These are the places where friendships deepen — not over spectacular gestures, but over shared discovery. A tram ride along an estuary. A crab sandwich on a beach. A conversation about fossils and carpet-makers and why some places endure while others fade. If you enjoy walking routes that bring people together, the coast paths here are among the finest anywhere.
Bring someone who deserves a good day out. Explore the quieter side. You will not regret it.