The Warren

A Memory of Exmouth.

From about 1930 to 1939 my family had a shack/bungalow on the Warren. Every summer we loaded the car at our home in Exeter, drove to Exmouth, and were ferried to our shack by a boatman, Bill Hocking. My brother John became an accomplished dinghy sailor and raced at the Exmouth club - sometimes with me as crew. (Later in life he became a boat designer, notably of the 505). We were at the Warren in 1939 facing two threats. One was the sea eroding the dunes - almost at our back door. The other was the approach of war. We went home to Exeter a few days before war was declared. And that winter the sea broke through the dunes, taking a score or more bungalows. But great memories remain - AW