Jeremy Vine has been visiting one popular seaside destination for over two decades – and he’s even featured it in his latest book. Authoring Murder On Line One, Jeremy’s first whodunnit novel incorporates the shores along the English Channel; for it is Sidmouth, in Devon, where a “massive wave” sweeps a couple of his characters out to sea.
Penning an article for The Guardian, the 60-year-old BBC Radio 2 host revealed what drew him to the Devonshire town in the first place. Ready to marry his then fiancée, Rachel Schofield (now his wife and mother of his two children), Jeremy was visiting his future spouse’s parents.
“Her parents had retired to a sprawling house near Sidmouth,” he recalled.
Married in the church of St John the Evangelist in Tipton St John, Devon, the newlyweds began frequenting Sidmouth “summer after summer”.
Soon the patter of tiny feet joined the summer jaunts to Sidmouth as the couple had two daughters, Martha and Anne.
“It became their go-to bucket-and-spade location,” he said about Sidmouth seaside town.
Situated along Devon’s Jurassic Coast, Jeremy shared what he loves about Sidmouth.
“It feels like a town going places,” he noted. “It’s chintzy in places, drab in others, but it feels real; and real by the sea is a different kind of beauty.”
Recently rated by the Environment Agency as having “excellent bathing water quality”, locals and visitors alike are sure to enjoy a dip in the water.
Although, “it’s not a classic sandy beach”. Jeremy set the scene: “[There’s] a single triangle of brown sand [that] is revealed at low tide, and that’s your lot.”
He added: “But you feel you’re facing proper sea, with heavy weather triggering waves that crash against rocks by the promenade.”
