The Well House Tavern, on Cathedral Yard, keeps a skeleton in its cellar. Nobody quite agrees what it is — a Black Death victim, a teenage Anglo-Saxon, or a mix of male and female bones — but it sits below a 16th-century timber-framed pub with Saxon stonework and a probably-Norman well. You drink upstairs.
That is roughly how Exeter works. It is a cathedral city on the River Exe, small enough to cross on foot, and most of its history is still in use. The centre wraps around Cathedral Green, a wide lawn that fills with independent markets on Saturdays and a Christmas market in December. Around it run the High Street, the Princesshay precinct, and Gandy Street, a narrow cobbled lane of independent shops that J.K. Rowling, who lived here as a student in the 1980s, is said to have had in mind for Diagon Alley.
For pizza and cider there's The Old Firehouse on New North Road, which does square pizzas and a hefty cider selection and has been a student institution for years. For a tasting menu there's Stage on Magdalen Road, in the Michelin Guide since 2022, where the menu changes daily and you don't find out what it is until it arrives.
Magdalen Road is the leafy, sought-after end of things — coffee roasters, delis, a wine shop, and The Mount Radford, a pub since 1850 doing Sunday roasts.
Down at the Quayside, about fifteen minutes' flat walk below the centre, historic warehouses give way to waterside pubs, antique shops, cannon on the cobbles, and boat and bike hire from Saddles & Paddles. The 1680 Custom House is believed to be the oldest brick building in the city. It is the best place for a drink by the water.
The cathedral has the longest uninterrupted medieval stone vaulted ceiling in the world, though the detail people remember is smaller. Cut into the base of the door below the astronomical clock is a round hole — thought to be the world's oldest cat flap. The clock's mechanism was greased with animal fat, which drew mice, so in 1598 Bishop Cotton paid carpenters to cut a hole for the cathedral cat. The cats were on the payroll at 13 pence a week. The clock is reputed to be the source of "Hickory Dickory Dock."
Beneath the High Street run the Underground Passages, medieval water tunnels first dug in 1346 — the only such system in Britain open to the public, and narrow, dark and low. Above ground, Northernhay Gardens is the oldest public open space in England, laid out in 1612, and holds the only length of Saxon town wall visible in the country.
Four miles down the estuary sits Topsham, a pastel-painted former port ten minutes away by train, with one of Devon's best small-town food scenes and The Turf, a canalside pub with "no road access at all — just a beer garden by the canal." You walk to it.
St Davids station puts London Paddington about two hours away, roughly half-hourly, with the M5 meeting the city at junction 30.
Avocets and Brent geese winter on the Topsham mudflats, and someone, most weeks, is paddling a kayak down the canal towards the Double Locks for a pint.
