Day Trip to Exeter

Pictures: 1) Part of the castle connected to the old wall, 2) me on the trail walking up to the castle, 3) my little robin, 4) the Exeter River, 5) Swans swimming, 6) Exeter Cathedral, 7) the longest uninterrupted vaulted ceiling in Europe, 8) St. Martain's Church from pre-1050 (the brick building on left), 9) me inside the tunnels

~ remember, you can double click to see the pics big, then use the back arrow to return to the blog


On Saturday I woke up at 8 am and packed a lunch and fruit, then headed to the Paddington train station. I was worried that I'd have to wait in a long line to get my BritRail pass validated, but I walked up to a customer service desk that had no line and got it validated in about 10 seconds. I was so glad I didn't have to buy an actual ticket since the lines were atrocious! Even though I got out of the flat later than I wanted to, I still had to wait around for about 25 minutes at the station for the 10:06 train to Exeter to arrive. I decided to go to Exeter because on my way home from Hampton Court Palace the other day the man sitting across from me suggested it as a good place to go for a day trip.

With my BritRail I can use the train as much as I want for any 15 days within a 2 month period. This was day one. The train ride to Exeter took about 2 hrs 15 mins, although I wish I'd known about the "quiet coach" before I boarded because all the children in my train car were quite loud. However, I had a window seat and the views were spectacular. I passed fields still covered in snow, and green grass with grazing sheep, and meandering rivers - all under a blue sky with white clouds. However, the closer we got to our destination, the more the cloud cover increased.

It was cloudy all day in Exeter and fairly cold, however I didn't mind as long as it wasn't raining! When I got to the train station at "Exeter St. David's" I had to hop on another train (about 1 min ride) to Exeter Central. From there I just started walking toward what I gathered to be the city center. Luckily there were information boards all over the place with maps on them so I walked up to one and realized there was a park not to far from where I stood, so I started to walk in that direction.

Everything was very green (I guess that's what happens when a country has nonstop rain), and I walked up this path that followed beside part of the City Wall and up to Rougemont Castle. The City Wall was built between 58 and 200 AD when the Romans invaded and the Celts were pushed out and into Wales. 3/4 of the wall is still standing and while parts have since been rebuilt, a good chunk is still the original Roman workmanship. You can look at the wall and tell which is which (if your tour guide is really cool and explains it to you ;)). Anyway, the castle is less like a castle now and more like the shell of a castle that really only has some towers left. I believe that was built around 1077 for William the Conqueror. The view from the top of the path (you couldn't actually go up into the towers) was very pretty.

Exeter is on a ridge between two valleys which makes it a natural place to build a fortress since it is easily defensible. As I walked the path I could hear birds everywhere and all of a sudden this little robin landed on a branch right next to me and started singing at the top of his lungs. I was so close I could have reached out and touched him, and I stood, mesmerized, as I watched his orange breast flutter and heave in joyful song. I have a thing for robins (blame it on watching The Secret Garden a few too many times), but really it was quite amazing. I took pictures of it, with and without the flash, and it never moved. These animals are seriously something out of a storybook! At Hyde Park the other day I watched several people feeding squirrels by hand.

Anyway, from there I took the path back down and into the Rougemont & Northernhay Gardens. They were pretty as well, and another robin did the same as the first. In spring the gardens will be absolutely lovely for I could see the beginnings of tulips and daffodils everywhere.

From there I walked to the Quayside (which is the riverside). The Exeter River runs through one of the valleys and alongside it former warehouses have been converted into antique and craft shops. They are build into what is basically the side of the hill, on top of which is the edge of the city wall. The area was very quaint and I wished I had more time to explore it. There were, again, dozens of swans and I got some amazing pictures of the beautiful birds.

I thought that Exeter was on the seaside, but it is actually 10 or 12 miles away. However, there were seagulls flying overhead all day long, squawking. I know they are rather annoying birds, but I can't help but like to hear them for they remind me of Miami.

I walked back up the steep hill to the city's center and to the Exeter Cathedral. I walked through (warming up a bit) and listened to choir practice, which was just lovely. The inside of the cathedral was quite impressive and according to the tour guide (will tell you about that in a minute) it has the longest uninterrupted vaulted ceiling in Europe. The founding of the cathedral at Exeter, dedicated to Saint Peter, dates from 1050, when the seat of the bishop of Devon and Cornwall was transferred from Crediton because of a fear of sea-raids (i.e. - pirates). The cathedral wasn't actually started until 1133, but part of that original structure still stands (though part was destroyed in WWII by the Germans).

During WWII the RAF (Royal Air Force) bombed a town in Germany (Lubeck) that had no industry or war supplies - it was just a quaint little town and apparently very beautiful. To this day we still don't know why the RAF bombed them, but it really pissed Hitler off so in retaliation he had some of his men do research and find five comparable towns in Britain. In mid 1942 the Baedeker Blitz targeted five historic cities with no military or strategic importance: Bath, Canterbury, Exeter, Norwich, and York.

In the church yard I met up with a free tour guide for a 2pm tour of the "Cathedral Close" - this is the area immediately surrounding the cathedral. There were about 10 of us on the tour, and I was by far the youngest. The tour guide was a volunteer in his 60s who totally impressed me with the amount of information he remembered! Exeter is the first place in the UK to call a hotel a "hotel." Before this, all hotels were called inns or boarding houses or something. The man who built the hotel didn't want it to seem like a low-class place, so he found the word hotel (from French perhaps?) and called it the Royal Clarence Hotel. Many famous people have stayed there including queens, the Beatles, Michael Jackson, and more.

On the corner near the Clarence Hotel was St. Martin's Church, the building of which has been dated to before 1050. This is probably the oldest standing building in Exeter. At one point in history it was a pub and it was famous for giving drinks to beggars and poor people, so it had an outdoor tap which is still there today. Underneath the ground in the Cathedral Close there are ancient Roman Baths. They are apparently amazing and huge, but the church owns the property and has declined public access to view the baths, which is quite a shame. The baths weren't even discovered until the 1960s when something else was being build and they had to dig down to make foundations for it.

After that tour I walked around the new shopping area (which is really strange because it is right behind the Close which is so old). I bought a dark chocolate-raspberry chocolate bar from a place called Hotel Chocolate. It is amazing. After I looked around a bit I went to the entrance to the Underground Tunnels which I had booked a tour for earlier. It was only £3.90 for students, so I was happy with that. My tour started at 4:30 pm, and it takes you into the tunnels that were built to house the lead pipes that would ship water from a fresh spring to the Cathedral Close for the clergy to have fresh drinking water. Lead poisoning wouldn't have been a problem because if you didn't die from the plague first, the average life span was still only 35, and it would take longer than that to build up enough lead in your system from the drinking water to die from lead poisoning. The tunnels were build so the men could fix the pipes when they leaked without having to dig up the roads. The original tunnels were built by the stonemasons who worked on the sculptures for the front of the Cathedral in the 1300s. Thus, the original parts of the tunnels are from that time period. Interestingly enough, these parts are much sturdier and need much less upkeep than the tunnels built in the 1500s which they started when the upper class business men also demanded clean water.

The tunnels were really small - not much wider than the width of my shoulders and usually shorter than me. In one section you have to crawl through the tunnels since the highest part is only 1 meter high. Clearly, if you had problems with claustrophobia you could not go on this tour. It was pretty cool though. Interestingly enough, during the Baedeker Blitz I mentioned earlier, hundreds of people went into these tunnels for shelter from the bombs and would have to stay in these cramped little tunnels, huddled together for hours at a time.

In one section we could hear the traffic overhead, even though we were 7 meters below ground. All the tunnels are between 3 and 7 meters underground. The tour guide reminded us that though it sounded loud, we were actually very safe. She then said "Imagine how the people in the tunnels would feel as they heard the bombs overhead." That would have been scary.

By the time that was over it was 5:15 so I ran to the train station since my train back to Paddington left at 6 pm from Exeter St. David's. I didn't need to rush however since I made it to Exeter St. David's by 5:30. lol Exeter is a very small town and easily walkable, so I wasn't far from the central station when I left the Underground Tunnels.

I found the "quiet coach" on the way back and sat at a table (there are a few parts of the coach that have tables with 4 seats around them). Across from me a little boy and his dad sat down. The little boy was playing his game boy and I asked him how old he was (to be able to play that by himself so well) and he said four. He and his dad were going to meet his mom and older brother in Reading (pronounced Redding) and then going to London for a couple days to see Big Ben and the Tower of London (at least those were the things the boy told me he most wanted to see). This kid, let me tell you, was amazing! He was so smart and well-mannered. When his dad gave him a bag of some sort of snack I said to him "What are those?" and he said "Chocolates - you want one?" then he handed me the bag and let me pick (with my own fingers) the first one. So I tried the animal cracker dipped in chocolate and it was good, of course. Later his dad gave him a little tub of Cadbury mini chocolate eggs and the little boy said "Would you like one?" and again let me choose first before he had any. I said to him, "Are you supposed to suck on them or bite them?" and he said "Both, but I like to suck on mine to make the flavor last longer." Then he was asking me about where I lived and about London and my trips etc. He started saying "So we're going North right now, then we'll be going East and then on the way home we'll be going South.." and I'm thinking "What freaking four year old knows nautical directions!!??" I asked the dad what age school became mandatory and he said 4, but preschool is from 2 to 4. I think we should do this in the US because our country would be better if our kids were all that smart.

From there I took the tube back to my flat and that was the end of my journey. It was so lovely and I'm so glad I went - even if I was alone on Valentines Day. lol