There it is, bottom centre in the map above with the "official" ferry route shown upper right.
What is at Turf?
Not a lot! Parking for boats if a basin of the Exeter Canal plus the pub.
Turf is even less accessible by road than the minimalist landing near the Lock Cottage that we visited yesterday. Access is by farm track, footpath, cycleway or, during the summer season, by ferry.
Departure at Topsham is from Trout's boat year, also close the the Quay.
As before, timings can vary according to the tides ...
... and the price adds a little surcharge to the meal/drinks at the pub.
A pleasant sail but, for most folk, a return is to be advised! But please don't rush to Topsham as the service has finished for this season. Winter trips are organised by the RSPB.
As Easy As A B C for I J K and T (part 1)
To grasp the significant of this groups of Exeter "City" services, re-organised by Stagecoach a little over a year ago, we need to grasp something of the geography to the est of the city.
B3212 is the Pinhoe Road leading to Taunton : B3183 (formerly A30) is the Honiton Road leading to all points east : A3015 runs via Topsham and joins the A 376 to Exmouth and also from M5 junction 30 there is the A3052 to Seaton (for fbb mansions) Lyme Regis and Bridport.
In the 1930s, the city fathers decided that and Exeter by-pass was needed to take traffic continuing to the more westerly west country away from the city centre.
It ran from the Pinhoe Road at Whipton (map. top centre) via a complex set of intersections with the Honiton Road and the routes via Lyme Regis to Countess Wear (bottom left) for the Topsham Road.
One distinctive feature of the road was a bridge over the Honiton Road near Gallows corner.
From down below it looks just like a typical railway bridge; indeed fbb has been under it several times thinking it carried the Exmouth branch line!
Of course, much more recently, the by-pass has been by-passed by the M5!
Between the M5 and the railway there has been a huge industrial estate development but housing filled in the gap between the old by-pass and the Exmouth branch line.
This includes Digby Tesco and retail park (light roofs lower left), IKEA under construction on the red-brown site (bottom right) and, south of that, more housing at Newcourt.
There is hardly time to draw breath when a further development was announced between the M5 and Exeter Airport north of the Honiton Road.
This is too recent to feature on Google Earth or on various street maps, but a block closest to the M5 is "Science Park" and a big chunk to the north east is for housing.
There were several items on the Stagecoach shopping list as follows:-
Buses to the rapidly developing Science Park area
Buses to the rapidly developing Newcourt area
Buses to the recently opened IKEA
Links from Topsham Road and Pinhoe Road to Digby shopping
Tomorrow, fbb will attempt to join the dots and (at last) explain the complexities of I, J, K and T which, with a bit of fbb cartography, are less daunting than they might at first appear.
BREAKING NEWS
GoAhead Oxford Bus has just announced that it will be withdrawing its London express service X90 from January 2020.
More on this tomorrow.
Next IKEA incursion blog : Friday 4th October
There is an additional boat service to Topsham. Stuart Line Cruises of Exmouth offer a round robin cruise from Exmouth to Topsham and return on the train or vice versa. It runs about 3 times a week.
ReplyDeleteMore items to add to FBB's Addenda:
ReplyDeleteStagecoach Devon have timetable changes in little over three weeks time - details can be found on their Southwest twitter page. Generally minor but some reduced Saturday morning services.
Holman Way (Recent road on former railway track to the Quay) is named after the John Holman and his family who were involved with various maritime operations in Topsham Quay, boat building operating thee wharfs and shipping. Too many to list just google Holman Topsham and ....
If you want bang up to mapping of Exeter Science Park (and indeed the whole East of Exeter growth area) go to www.openstreetmap.org
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