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My earliest memory of Devon is being lost, and my mum crying. I was at junior school. I had a friend whose mother was described as “vague” – this was the 1970s, so that could have been code for almost anything. The vague mother had given my normally quite organised mother directions to a remote house where my schoolfriend spent his summers. We were “popping in” (70s code: spending the day there). The instructions to find the place were something like, “Turn left after South Zeal, pass the dirt track and follow the direction the sheep are facing.”
After an hour of pretending we were still on the right route, my mum suddenly burst into tears and uttered a rare denunciation of a fellow human being. “That SILLY woman!” she shouted. “We don’t know where we are. Nobody does.”
Were we not just lost, but lost-lost, in the way that leads to humans sometimes disappearing for ever? “Nobody does” sounded serious to this 10-year-old. There were no mobile phones and, this being the olden days, only a large spiral-bound map of the entire country in the footwell of the car (at this stage, a gen Z reader will be saying: “Nah. That never happened”). We were, I suspect, on Dartmoor.
My mum pulled herself together and eventually the tears were dried, new purpose found, her boy reassured, the house somehow located. But for many years the word “Devon” was synonymous in my mind with “lost and weeping”. It was not a place you go to by choice. Nobody does.
But 25 years later I did return. In a sense there was no choice; the location came with my lovely fiancee Rachel Schofield. Her parents had retired to a sprawling house near Sidmouth. It had a cobwebbed pantry and service bells for long-dead maids. They suggested a marquee in their back garden on the wedding day. I was hardly about to reply: “Have you thought of Hammersmith?”
Not lost, this time, but found. We were married in the church of St John the Evangelist in Tipton St John. My mum cried again, but for different reasons. Over the years we came down summer after summer, Christmas after Christmas, for R&R in the muddy Devon air. Our two kids arrived. It became their go-to bucket-and-spade location: I recently heard a psychologist explain how a regular family holiday location is “good for children’s mental health”, and wondered why she never mentioned adults.
There are some great spots around that part of the east Devon coast. You can see the full glory of the Jurassic Coast in Seaton, and gasp at the fact that Jurassic means “ 200m years ago”. There are almost-private beaches too (just don’t picnic in the shade of the rock face – I never trust a bit above me not to break off and I don’t want to be killed by the Mesozoic era). You can go to arcades in Exmouth, not quite Jurassic but still wonderfully old-fashioned. Play the penny falls and the impossible lucky dip. Or visit the “Excape” room there, set up and run by the most lovely young couple you will ever meet.
At Branscombe beach you can see the place where, in 2007, the so-called “scavengers of Branscombe” descended. A freighter shed its cargo, the goods were washed on to the normally deserted beach, and about £1m-worth of cars, motorbikes, spare parts, bric-a-brac and countless items of treasure trove were liberated by people who came from all over the country. Newspapers called it the “Branscombe beach booty bonanza”.
There I go again, letting my news head take over. Devon is a place to leave the real world behind. Walk from Axmouth to Lyme Regis if you want the coastal path. Go to Budleigh Salterton if you love a cliff and you don’t mind pebbles (use sea shoes and a wetsuit, and suddenly you have Bondi beach in Budleigh). Go to the village of Beer for Pecorama if you have young ones; their model railway takes humans. Ottery St Mary has Wildwood wildlife park and its drop slide, the most inspiring challenge to health and safety law I’ve seen this century. If you want pure walking, Newton Poppleford to Budleigh Salterton is six miles. Seaton Wetlands has three miles of trails. Or just walk in a circle round Colyton.
But it’s Sidmouth I come back to. After getting married close by, it became our summer place. It has sights such as Jacob’s Ladder historic wooden steps, the supersize-me cakes at the Clock Tower cafe or the famous Donkey Sanctuary, probably one of the most popular charities on the face of the Earth. It’s not a classic sandy beach – a single triangle of brown sand is revealed at low tide, and that’s your lot – but you feel you’re facing proper sea, with heavy weather triggering waves that crash against rocks by the promenade. When I set my first whodunnit, Murder on Line One, in the town, I included a scene in chapter two where a massive wave sweeps the radio station manager and her just-sacked DJ into the water together. He has to rescue her, fishing her out of the sea after she kicked him out of his job.
What I love most about Sidmouth is that it feels like a town going places. It was once cruelly nicknamed “God’s waiting room”. But recently Radio 2 had to cover a story about a giant lump of congealed fat, wet wipes and dental floss that had blocked the sewers. “It is the size,” we were told, “of two doubledecker buses.” It was sucked out using some sort of reverse fire hose. Others despaired, but I felt this was Sidmouth laying down a marker. It had a bigger blob of fat than Blackpool. More families, more jobs, more going on (and going down). It’s chintzy in places, drab in others, but it feels real. And real by the sea is a different kind of beauty. Brits need proximity to the ocean. In Sidmouth you’re virtually in it.
Jeremy Vine’s debut mystery, Murder on Line One (HarperCollins, £20), is out now. To support the Guardian order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
