Then, Now, Next Walks by the Civic Society – Future Events

We need the help of our Society's members to continue with our series of walks through Exeter. Jim Perriam who very kindly took the planning and running of our series of walks on a year ago, told us, he would not be able to continue this, despite having enjoyed it a lot. So thank you, Jim, for successfully running this activity, and leading us to parts of Exeter we often drove by but never walked through. The idea now is to find members who will plan and lead individual walks, with Gert Vonhoff taking on the promotion of the events, till we find a new member taking on the walks as a series. For more details, please read the rest of this page.

The walks normally take place on the 1st Wednesday of each month, 2-4pm. We find that shorter walks (up to 2 miles) get a better turnout. The idea is to stroll though an area of Exeter, talk about its history, local developments and future planning for this area. This can be your neighbourhood, where you know a lot without any big preparation. Or you can take our ‘Discovering Exeter’ booklets which include walks to cut out a section and have a lot of information from the booklet already. Or you can challenge you and take us to a sight in Exeter which you always wanted to know more about – and now the preparation of your walk will provide you with the focus to do so. All on the walk will chip in with what they know, which creates a very nice atmosphere of sharing.

Our next dates will be: 11 Sep (a week later than usual), 2 Oct, 6 Nov and 4 Dec. Please contact Gert if you want to take over a walk (gertvonhoff@btinternet.com, 07766 706614). Gert will advertise the walk on our webpage, send details to our monthly News Bulletin and provide information on our Whatsapp Group, which we find very useful for organising. It is a closed group, so let Gert know if you want to become a member.

 

Planning and leading a walk should not be too much of work. Come up with an idea, liaise with Gert. Provide a bit of information where the walk will lead us and most importantly where we will start and stop (with transport links if it is not in the city centre), maybe with a photo. Do a tracky to familiarise yourself with any obstacles.

We had a very well frequented walk on 7 August 2024, along parts of the City Wall, with some explanations about its history, current state of repair and information for tourists and what could be done to improve these. The interest we got for this walk (more than 15 turned up) surprised us, and helped us to make the decision to carry on with this activity. We normally have much smaller groups (4-7) and at times had to cancel the walk due to bad weather. So come on board and help us with continuing our journey.

 

More about the City Wall history

As for the walk along parts of the City Wall, Gert found some very reliable and detailed material in Stuart Blaylock’s ‘Exeter City Wall Survey’ from 1995, which can easily accessed online and provides fascinating insights into the history of the City Wall. Check out the link below, especially pp. 14-19, which alongside more details of the history contain some information on ownership. Chapter 2 informs about the documentary evidence. The appendices and figures provides detailed information for all the sections of the wall.