Silver Street's name is alleged to derive from Latin silva, which seems to me doubtful. As it climbs steeply and narrowly away from the bustle of Broad Street, shops and crowds diminish, and there would be relative quiet—but for the snarling gears of vehicles trying to get past each other. The next few yards are wider, but only because of parking spaces on the left for the town's small library, which sits at the top of a grassy slope. Overlooking it, next up the street, is the wall of a sculpture garden. The street climbs on, past the opening of a road on the right that is already utterly suburban (though it descends to another point in the middle of the old town); and a remarkably high stone wall on the left. The worst of the slope begins to ease before you find the handsome pile of the Catholic church spiring from the high ground to the left, and on the right the Nag's Head pub, inside which there may be a thick crowd and a band.

Ahead on the right appears the pink-washed quaintness of the Mariners Hotel, long and low and half-timbered. It started in the seventeenth century as a coaching inn on the way out toward Axminster. In the nineteenth century it was the home of the three Philpot sisters, great fossil collectors; and in the early twentieth century, with its roof still thatched, it went under other names, "The Nest", "Morley Cottage", "Red Cottage". According to the hanging sign outside, the inn is "illustrated by Beatrix Potter in Tales [sic] of Little Pig Robinson".

Opposite to the Mariners, Pound Road forms the third side of a triangle, connecting back to Pound Street. And just past the Mariners—actually just past its neighbour, the front garden of the Springfield guesthouse—is the entrance to what may be the world's narrowest two-way-traffic street: though only ten feet wide, it has a white line painted along its middle. (And double yellow lines along the sides to make sure you know you can't park. If you did, you'd be occupying both lanes.) It is called Woodmead Road, after a former farm, and descends (after broadening) to the river.

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house with US army plaque

Kent House

West Hill Rd / Haye Lane

the Victoria pub

It is on another crossroads: to the left climbs Clappentail Road, and to the right something called Roman Road descends so steeply and roughly that it is no longer a road usable by traffic.

The Victoria used to be the railway hotel. For just past it, on the other side of Roman Road, was the station, when the railway came from Axminster to Lyme, between 1903 and 1963. Now the site of the station is occupied by a small industrial estate, an office building, and then the Lyme medical centre.

Penny Plot

The road reaches the highest part of its curve from Lyme to Uplyme, and up to the left rears the Victorian-Gothic hall of the Woodroffe School.

parking bay where at ?three each afternoon

From the point between the school and the railway cutting a kind of sprig of little streets springs off—Woodroffe Meadow (a row of houses under the school), Haye Barton (a sprig off Woodroffe Meadow), Launchycroft.

The entrance of Launchycroft is squeezed in by the side of an old railway bridge.

The two long parapets of the bridge are offset—the left-hand one begins opposite to where the right-hand one ends—because the railway cutting passes under at a very oblique angle. Here was where the railway, coming from the station just behind you, crossed under the road and started its curve up into the hills that it had to tackle in order to get to Axminster. The grey ==metal parapets are not conspicuous, and most drivers perhaps pass them by without noticing that there is a bridge. The first time I walked past here, I looked over, saw the old cutting choked with bushes and trees, realized what it was, and thought "Why didn't they make a greenway out of it—a footpath or a cycle trail?" as has been done so successfully in many other parts of the world. Many others walking over here must have thought the same.

One of the many obstacles to reviving the railway is this bridge, which looks as if it is preserved but in fact would have to be rebuilt. If you get down under it, you will see that it is propped up by ==two pillars, or rather obelisks. It is no longer strong enough to carry traffic without this support, so if the support were removed to let trains through the bridge would have to be rebuilt.

As you cross the bridge you cross the county boundary into Devon. Actually it is just past the bridge, marked not only by the =="Welcome to Devon" and "Welcome to Uplyme" signs but by an inconspicuous footpath on the right, which descends along the boundary. And just past here rises the Black Dog inn, or rather the Old Black Dog bed-and-breakfast, as it now is. And beyond rises a green backdrop, the hills of Devon. So quite a lot happens at a point, or at any rate within a few paces: the modestly highest part of the road, the railway bridge, the Devon line, the view of the Black Dog with the ==