I’ve spent my whole life visiting Exmouth, but I never realised how many stories were lurking under the surface…
Hi, my name’s Claire and I’m the tour guide behind Exmouth Tours.
My family moved to Exmouth long before I was born, and while I grew up in London, I visited the Devonshire coast town constantly as a child, always jumping at the opportunity to get out of the big smoke and jump into Exmouth’s waters, or climb up to Orcombe Point, marvelling at the red cliffs as I went.
As a young adult, I started travelling the world; one of my favourite activities in every city being a walking tour. Cairo, Berlin, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney: I took walking tours across the globe, always finding them a fascinating look into local life and culture.
On a walking tour in Tbilisi in 2019, I even ended up meeting my partner!
In 2020, in the face of the pandemic, we moved back to the UK; and the only feasible place that we could stay was my gran’s old house in Exmouth.
It was the Exmouth I loved as a child; but being older and more able to appreciate nature, culture and history made us immediately become enchanted with this East Devon coastal town. So much so that we decided to buy our first home in the town!
With our new travel mentality, we set about finding the most interesting stories of our new home.
I set up the website Go South West England to provide helpful local travel guides to the region (I’ve also lived in Bristol and Bath and have lots of family in Cornwall), so we were constantly on the lookout for intriguing new stories.
We always tossed around the idea of starting a walking tour, and once we’d heard some tales of smugglers, pirates and dinosaurs, we were sold.
In 2023, we started Exmouth Tours, the pioneer route being a walking tour around the town’s highlights.
Take a look at our potted version of Exmouth’s history (we cover it much more in the tour!) or information about the route and how to book.