Apart from a few houses and farms on the hilly old common land to the east, most of Lympstone village runs west from The Saddlers Arms, a large public house on the Exeter/Exmouth road, to the Exe estuary which is about a mile wide at this point.  The village lies in a narrow valley and its main road (which has various names but begins as Longmeadow Road)  meanders down the north side of this valley.   I called it a main road but in fact after a short stretch of straight terraces with names like Brookside, where an even narrower Longbrook Lane turns off to the left, it twists and turns through a series of tight corners, the first being appropriately called Pretty Corner.  Further on, Strawberry Hill turns off to the right to wind back to the main road.  The Old Dairy and a nursery garden follow with Lympstone Parish Church (St Mary’s) on the following series of corners in Church Rd.  The Redwing public house is the next landmark – just past a wall so ancient that is was in the Doomsday Book. 

At the T junction where Burgmanns Hill joins from the right our road becomes The Strand and passes under the railway line, which carries a little shuttle train along the coast between Exeter and Exmouth.  The Swan is opposite a few shops at the bottom of a little hill up to the station.  Behind it is a lane leading to a boat shelter, a slipway and a sailing club where the stream flows into the estuary.  More than forty boats will be found moored here in summer.  A large car park can be found along a lane to the left that ducks back under another small railway bridge. 

Our road continues past a pretty Post Office and then turns left along the line of the estuary.  Further on the left is The Globe public house which is opposite a maze of small alleyways where tiny fishermens’ cottages crowd along the waterline.  Our road, by then called Sowden Lane, cuts sharp left and uphill back to meet Longbrook Lane at another exit from the village via Courtlands.  A past winner of competitions for pretty villages, Lympstone looks especially attractive in spring and summer when flowers in window boxes and tubs are everywhere.

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