River Otter

The River Otter rises in the Blackdown Hills in Somerset and winds south through East Devon to reach the English Channel at Lyme Bay. Part of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site, it flows through two Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The river passes quiet villages like Upottery and Ottery St Mary, where Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born. Near Honiton stands Tracey Mill, a 17th-century watermill still making trout in ponds fed by the leat. At Otterton, a thousand-year-old watermill grinds flour beside a new fish pass that lets migratory fish return upstream. The river’s estuary nature reserve shelters wintering wildfowl including brent goose, Eurasian wigeon and little grebe. Footpaths lead to viewing platforms and hides where visitors watch waders such as dunlin and Eurasian curlew. A wild breeding population of Eurasian beavers returned to the Otter in 2015 after being extinct in Britain for centuries. After a trial, the government allowed them to stay indefinitely, recognising their role in creating habitats and slowing floods. Environmentalists argue the dams improve river health and could attract visitors. Walkers follow the river through farmland and wooded valleys, crossing Coleridge Bridge at Ottery St Mary. The Tumbling Weir at Ottery St Mary spins in a circle, and Dotton’s medieval mill site was excavated by Time Team. The estuary’s saltmarsh and mudflats stretch east of Budleigh Salterton, where the river meets the sea.