Saturday 13 June 2026

Day 47 of walking
Beer to Lyme Regis
Distance: 14.98
Total distance: 918.46km
Climbing: 477m
Total climb: 30,412m

Today and tomorrow are the last of our taxi transfer days. We walked from Beer to Lyme Regis and a taxi was booked for 5pm to bring us back to Beer for the night. We arrived in Lyme Regis at 1pm and after a slow lunch and a swim rang the taxi company to see if they could pick us up early. The best they could do was 4.30pm. Tomorrow morning a taxi is booked for 9.30am to take us back to Lyme Regis for us to start walking. We asked the driver if he could come earlier, say 9 am. He rang around all his taxi driver mates to see if anyone could do a 9am pick up but no luck. So tomorrow will be a late start, probably not walking out of Lyme Regis much before 10am.

It was a windless, sunny, 21° day and fortunately at least 10 kilometres was in woodland in the shade. Of course it started with a climb out of Beer up East Ebb and then back down to Seaton Hole Beach. When the tide is low it is possible to walk a kilometre along the pebbly beach to Seaton and this is what we did. Seaton doesn’t have the Regency style of Sidmouth or the old world charm of Beer but it did have a Park Run. This is a world-wide phenomenon of a Saturday morning 5km timed run. Barbara does the Wellington Park Run along the wharves and used to do the Kapiti one along the Waikanae River. In New Zealand they start at 8am but in England they start at 9am. When we arrived in Seaton the run was in full swing. We chatted with the Race Director for a while and she said the one millionth Park Run would be run that day. They had considered starting at 8.59 today until someone pointed out New Zealand would have already run dozens of Park Runs by then, as they are 11 hours ahead and are the first in the world each Saturday.

Leaving Seaton we crossed the River Axe, Axminster is a larger town inland, and immediately had a very steep climb up through a golf course. The original Coast Path along the cliff tops has disappeared in large landslides so the diversion is through the golf course and through fields of corn. Soon we were into the Axmouth to Lyme Regis Undercliffs National Nature Reserve. This is an 11 kilometre long by 750m wide strip of land, the result of numerous landslides, the biggest on Xmas Eve 1839, separated from the cliffs by a huge chasm. This was the first such landslide scientifically studied and was a huge draw card for Victorian tourists. The interesting thing about it now, is that it was subsequently never farmed and has been left to its own devices. It has become a safe virgin woodland and dense scrub habitat for birds, butterflies, flowers, shrews, mice, lizards, snakes, and much else.

It is called an English Jungle, but to us it was much like any stretch of NZ native bush. It was cool and beautiful to walk through but the path was difficult. Lots of sharp ups and downs, constantly winding back and forth, tree roots to trip over, fallen trees and boggy and muddy stretches. Only one place where you could see the coast and a few places where you were aware of the towering white chalk cliffs. When you start this section of the walk you are committed to either keep going forward or retreating back on the same path. There is no where down to the coast and no paths inland to roads and civilisation.It seemed to take an age to get through the “jungle” but then suddenly you emerge into Lyme Regis, or more specifically The Cobb and Lyme Regis Beach. It was a warm, sunny Saturday and the beach, ice cream parlours, cafes, restaurants and bars were packed. The beach is protected from the rough sea and wind by The Cobb and is a sheltered, calm, sandy, shallow place for families. The Cobb is the large curved harbour wall built in the 13^th century to protect the resident fishing boats. We were pretty hungry by this stage and decided to have some fish and chips, a first for this trip. We had fish and chips here in 2023 and went back to the same chippie. One serving of cod and chips, £13.95, more than enough to fill the two of us. Then another first for us this trip. Because we had just had fish and chips, and because we were at the beach, and because it was Lyme Regis, we had an ice cream. Neither of us are big fans of ice cream but these were as good as you get in NZ. Barbara: salted caramel. Me: black currant and clotted cream.

We then joined the sun tan oiled masses and went for a swim. A lot of people on the beach but few in the water, because it was cold! Colder than my swim at Beer yesterday, but so refreshing.

Somewhere in the jungle we passed from the county of Devon into the county of Dorset. This is the last of the four counties of the Coast Path, Somerset, Cornwall, Devon and Dorset. We were not in Dorset for long, the taxi ride took us back to Beer which is in Devon. Tomorrow we will come back to Dorset. We only saw The Cobb end of Lyme Regis today. Tomorrow morning we will walk about a kilometre from The Cobb into Lyme Regis town. Lyme Regis “The Pearl of Dorset” used to be just Lyme. Following the granting of a royal charter by King Edward I in 1284, the town added the term “regis”. This simply means it has some sort of royal connection or endorsement. There are about 19 towns in England that have added Regis to their name.