wowed by a hoard of 22,888 Roman coins found by
a local metal detectorist, and the 100,000-year-old
hippo fossils pulled from the River Exe. The soaring
cathedral, meanwhile — largely unscathed by German
air raids — very much lives up to the hype. At 8.15am, I
walk self-consciously into morning prayers to find the
dean leading a congregation of just two. High above the
nave, the world’s largest stretch of uninterrupted gothic
vaulting fans out like a giant forest canopy. I find the
psalms impenetrable, but am transported, nonetheless.
If there’s a sight that sums up the city’s adaptability,
however, it’s The House That Moved. The three-storey
medieval building, which looks wonky enough to
topple over at any moment, was jacked onto wheels in
the 1960s and transported 230ft down the road to its
current location on West Street, near the quay, to avoid
demolition. That’s southeast Devon; spend time here and
you eventually get drawn towards the coast.
Sustainable spirits
“People say it makes sense to make rum in Devon,”
says Gemma Wakeham, part of Two Drifters’ wife-and-
husband team. The world’s first carbon-negative rum
distillery, just outside Exeter is stocked with stills and
barrels that recall the coast’s spirit smuggling past. Strung
from the rafters, a flag bearing the St Petroc’s Cross,
the county emblem: a black-and-white cross on a green
background. That’s more or less where tradition ends.
“The whole distillery is electric and runs on renewable
energy,” says Gemma, explaining how husband Russ’s
background in chemistry has driven their green ethos.
They use the same carbon capture technology recently
adopted by Coldplay for its pioneering net-zero tour; Chris
Martin, incidentally, is a former Exeter Cathedral choirboy
and were recently approached to supply cocktails for
the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference. The rums
themselves taste great, full of woozy zest and warmth.
“When we launched in 2019, we were producing 80 bottles
a week,” says Gemma. “That’s now 2,500.”
The distillery aims to offset every single element of its
production, from the growing of spices to the shipping
of sugar cane. This is in my mind as I head along the
Exe Estuary to Topsham, once the second-busiest port
in England. I arrive to the sound of baying gulls and
mast-slapping halyards, with the river shimmering out
towards the sea, surrounded by saltmarshes.
“When William of Orange arrived in England in 1688
to take the throne, this is where his fleet arrived,” says
Ed Williams-Hawkes, a powerboat navigator — complete
with eye patch — who moved to Topsham in the 1960s.
He points towards the quay. “You can imagine the scene;
Turkish cannons being pulled by shire horses; platoons
of Swiss guards; Norsemen in white bearskins. Incredible
to think about.”
Ed’s son Tom is head chef at The Salutation Inn, a few
minutes’ walk away, past Dutch-gabled townhouses.
Like the rest of the town, the inn creaks history.
Its 300-year-old wooden door — broad enough for
Victorian coaches to pass through — is still marked
with apotropaic carvings (to ward off evil spirits). These
apparently didn’t stop some lively activities taking
place here in centuries gone by, from attempting to get
a horse to jump over a table in the dining room to public
wrestling matches.
It’s a lot less rowdy on my visit, largely because the inn
is now geared towards one of the region’s more enduring
joys: good food and drink. The restaurant prides itself on
serving local produce such as crab, partridge and West
Country cheeses; an in-house fish deli, opened during
lockdown to support local fishermen, is still going strong.
Tom was trained by another Exeter local, Michael
Caines, who’s perhaps done more than anyone to draw
attention to Devon’s culinary scene. One of the few
Black chefs in the UK to have earned a Michelin star, he
opened five-star Lympstone Manor in 2017. The Grade
II-listed country house gazes out across the Exe Estuary
a few miles south of Topsham and is home to the kind of
luxury hotel-restaurant where discreet tags tell you howJan/Feb 2022 123DEVON