A very short distance further on, the white cliffs of the tiny cove of Beer come into view. Beer is an exceptionally delightful village, because of its strong individuality. At the top of the inlet the houses are clustered irregularly in little offshoots, but the main street runs down a deep cleft narrowing towards the sea between white gleaming chalk cliffs such as are rare in this county. A rapid stream races down the side of the street, and, dashing over a rock at the edge of the beach, buries itself in the shingle. Beer Head and the cliff that separates the village from Seaton run out into the sea, so that it is completely shut in, and from the water's edge it is impossible to see past those massive walls standing against the sea and sky on either side. The cove is so small that one wonders it counts as a harbour at all, but the beach is covered with many small boats and several heavily-built trawlers. As I saw it, the water was a clear blue-grey, and some sea-gulls were placidly floating a few yards from land, rising and falling as the waves rolled in, and looking as if they must be buried by each one. From Beer Head there is a splendid view of the coast; to the east, beyond Seaton, the landslip, and Lyme Regis, the line stretches grey and dim in the distance towards Portland; westwards, beyond Sidmouth's red cliffs, one sees how the land bends southward to Budleigh Salterton, and still further south towards Exmouth.

The little inobtrusive haven of Beer was in every way convenient for smugglers, and was naturally much beloved by them. Not more than seventy or eighty years ago, all the people in the village were supposed to take a share in the perils and joys of the ventures whenever they got the chance. The greatest of their number was a certain Jack Rattenbury, who began his life at sea when he was nine years old. Five years later he had already decided, 'I wished to make a figure on the stage of life,' and joined a privateering expedition. The ship was captured by the French, and Rattenbury taken prisoner. He escaped from prison, but not from Bordeaux, where for more than a year he was forced to stay, and he then sailed on his own account to America, and back to Havre, Copenhagen, and Guernsey. By the time he reached home again he was only sixteen! His life was an unceasing turmoil: smuggling, privateering, being impressed for the navy, and devising wiles for slipping away again, with the variation of being taken prisoner by French or Spaniards.

A steep road runs through lovely scenery from Ottery to Seaton. At intervals it passes through woods, or looks down into the misty, green, undulating country northwards; then, climbing a ridge, the sea, framed in woods, is seen over little hollows in the distant cliffs to the south. The road crosses a common with a few knots of wind-swept fir-trees, and runs steeply down to Seaton. On the west side of the bay the cliffs are a creamy white; eastwards, the shades are chiefly buff and pale brown. The variety of their strata make the cliffs interesting to geologists, for here are found layers of different kinds of chalk, limestone, greensand, marls, chert, and interspersed lines of flints.

Seaton is a pleasant little town without any remarkable feature. In the church is this curious epitaph with the date 1633 A.D.:

John Starre
. . . . . .
Starr on hie!
Where should a starr be
But on Hie?

On the east side of Seaton is the flat wide Valley of the Axe. The river is broad and rather important-looking, but it makes a most inglorious exit into the sea, for a huge pebble ridge rises as an impassable barrier, and the river has to twist away farther east and run out obliquely through a narrow channel. Axmouth, on the farther side, is a pretty old-fashioned little village, the thatched whitewashed cottages forming a street that curves round almost into a loop, while a chattering stream runs between the houses. In the church is the figure of a tonsured priest, with chasuble, stole, and alb, supposed to be one of the early Vicars of Axmouth. At his feet lies a dog, and the legend goes that this was not merely the customary image of a dog seen on tombs, but the effigy of his own favourite, whom he desired to be buried at his feet; and as an indemnity for this order he left a piece of ground to be devoted to charitable purposes, called Dog Acre Orchard. Mr Rogers, in his 'Memorials of the West,' tells us that the name remains till to-day.

Seaton Headland

A very short distance beyond is the great landslip which fell in 1839, when about fifty acres of the cliff slid more than a hundred feet to the shore beneath, but in such a way that part of an orchard descended with its growing trees, and they continued to flourish at their new level. More wonderful still, two cottages settled down on to the shore, without falling in pieces. The ground began to slide on the night of Christmas Eve, and by the evening of December 26 the great mass had fallen. To the west is a great chasm, and the cliff rises high on the seaward side. Farther east, no cliff rises beyond the chasm, but little hillocks and sand-dunes slope unevenly to the beach. The undercliff has not in the least the barren look of an ordinary bit of waste ground touching the shore, but is covered with grass and thick undergrowth, oaks and hawthorns, and masses of ivy, and beneath them the long spear-like leaves and scarlet-berried pods of the wild-iris.

If one returns to the Axe and begins to follow up its innumerable bends, one arrives opposite the little town of Colyton, which is not quite on the river. Mr Rogers says that the name comes from the British Collh y tun, and has the pretty meaning of 'the town where the hazels grow.'