River Axe

On the way back to the car we walked past the Seaton Tramway station and decided to investigate:

Seaton Tramway operates narrow gauge heritage trams between Seaton, Colyford and Colyton in East Devon’s glorious Axe Valley, travelling alongside the River Axe estuary through two nature reserves and giving an unrivalled view of the abundant wading bird life.

“Glorious “ seemed a questionable adjective for today but it looked fun and more importantly, dry. We did spot some of the trams have open carriages so opted to wait a bit longer and take one that has closed carriages. In the meantime we popped into Tesco to pick up some bits for a picnic lunch.
The tram journey was quite soporific - gently rattling along the estuary. There was lots of bird life to see. We noted this week that the swallows seemed to have arrived fo summer- I would imagine they wondered why they had bothered to make the trip. The tram ride took about 25 mins to reach the final destination- Colyton.
The village was a few mins walk away from the station and did give the impression that no one had told them that lockdown restrictions have been lifted, it was so quiet with very few businesses open.
We had the mandatory Johnnie style picnic, in a little shelter in a tiny public garden. This invariably includes ripping bread apart with bare hands and trying to spread something on it with no knife. I had chosen a bean salad which I had to eat without a spoon 🙄 I managed to fashion a spoon like shape out of an almost empty metal tube of hand cream, which was surprisingly effective.
We wandered into the church for a few mins but it was colder than outside so we headed back to the tram station and had time to pick up a steaming hot cup of tea to take away. We were concerned that the return tram was an open carriage one, but the front and back carriages were closed so we made sure we were first on to secure these seats - we needn’t have worried, we were the only passengers!
The tram crosses one road on its route, so the driver operates the signal to stop the traffic, which was sort of satisfying when they were stopping only for us!
Back in Seaton we jumped in the car with the heater on as quickly as we could and with the rain showing no sign of letting up - back to Lyme Regis.Read more