The Bridge Inn pours its beer by gravity, straight from casks in the cellar, and has been run by five generations of the same family since 1897. It sits pink and Grade II listed at Bridge Hill, beside the bridge over the River Clyst, with a few wooden benches outside overlooking the water. Food is ploughman's, sandwiches and snacks, served twelve to two and no later. The ale comes first here, and everyone seems to understand that.
In March 1998 the Queen visited, her first official visit to a pub. She left with a crate of commemorative ale and remarked that Prince Philip would enjoy it.
Down at the Quay, the Lighter Inn occupies part of a 1760 building that was once the Customs House, back when Topsham was an international port and named for the lighters that carried cargo between ship and shore. Further along Ferry Road, the Passage House Inn opened in 1721 beside the ferry across the Exe that still runs today. On Fore Street, the Globe Hotel has traded since the sixteenth century — log fires, wood panelling, Sunday roasts and St Austell ales — and the Salutation, a former coaching inn, now runs a Michelin Guide restaurant and a fishmonger, and keeps its old cobbled courtyard.
Darts Farm began in 1972 as a hut at the bottom of a field selling Ronald Dart's fruit and veg. It now employs around 130 and holds a butcher, fishmonger, deli, bakery and cyder maker, run by Ronald's three sons, Paul, Michael and James. Fore Street and the Strand fill in the rest with independent galleries, delis and specialist shops.
The Goat Walk is a raised path along the edge of the Exe, flat and pushchair-friendly, with wide views across the mudflats and moored boats. It was named at a council meeting in 1908, when someone tired of the fancier suggestions being floated said, "But it's nowt but a bloody goat walk!" and the name stuck.
The Exe Estuary Trail runs traffic-free north to Exeter and south around the water, and the foot ferry crosses to the Turf side and its canal towpath. Bowling Green Marsh, an RSPB reserve at the confluence of the Exe and Clyst, is a short walk from the High Street, and in winter black-tailed godwit and wigeon feed close to the hide.
Along the Strand stand the Dutch-gabled merchants' houses, tall and narrow, with curved parapets that echo Amsterdam and gardens set across the road so merchants could watch their own ships come in. The wealth came from serge and sailcloth sold to the Low Countries, and the town built ships too, among them HMS Terror, later lost with Franklin in the Arctic.
Trains run about every half hour on the Avocet Line to Exeter and Exmouth, Topsham the single passing place where the track briefly becomes two. Exeter is four miles north, just off the A376.
The Topsham Museum, in seventeenth-century buildings on the estuary front, keeps period rooms, shipbuilding history and memorabilia of Vivien Leigh, who married a local solicitor here in 1932. Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band lived and died here.
The ferry still crosses on demand, and the tide sets the pace. One visitor guide reckons that here time has slowed down, and nothing is urgent.
