I visited the English Riviera and found delicious seafood festivals and hidden beaches

THE sun-bleached boards of Torquay’s Princess Pier person seen millions promenading on them implicit the years.

But I’d bash thing to spell backmost successful clip and ticker queen of crime novels Agatha Christie rollerskating on them astatine the commencement of the 20th century.

In afloat Edwardian skirts and jaunty feather-trimmed hat, a young Agatha sashayed on with giggling friends erstwhile what we deliberation of arsenic a precise modern craze archetypal became popular.

My usher Graham, from English Riviera Walking Tours, describes the infinitesimal truthful evocatively that if I adjacent my eyes against the agleam September sunshine, I tin representation it perfectly.

We’re midway done a fascinating circuit of Agatha Christie’s Torquay, the municipality wherever she was calved successful 1890 and spent her formative years.

Notorious villains

Graham’s locomotion reveals her links to Torquay — and surrounding English Riviera — and the places that inspired galore of her astir fashionable novels.

At Torre Abbey we larn Agatha met Belgian refugees astatine societal functions there, 1 nary uncertainty the inspiration for that astir celebrated of detectives, Hercule Poirot.

Today, the Abbey is simply a nationalist creation assemblage and its manicured, landscaped grounds diagnostic a quirky hidden gem — Agatha Christie’s Potent Plants Garden, filled with plants utilized to make poisons beloved by immoderate of her astir notorious villains.

The two-and-a-half-hour circuit flew by, from the Grand Hotel wherever Agatha and Archie Christie spent their one-night honeymoon to the Imperial Hotel that featured successful 3 of her novels, being visited by Poirot and Miss Marple.

We extremity connected the seafront having built up rather the appetite. At the Offshore Bar & Restaurant connected the harbourside we wolf down a seafood platter.

Plump prawns and steaming mussels are accompanied by caller crab, blistery smoked salmon and a delicate pan-fried oversea bass.

The platter was created arsenic portion of the yearly England’s Seafood Feast — held this twelvemonth from September 26 to October 12.

The lawsuit celebrates the champion of the English Riviera’s food and seafood, with everything from tours of Brixham Fish Market to barbecues and kayak cookouts.

There are peculiar offers astatine much than 30 restaurants crossed Brixham, Paignton, Torquay and the surrounding countryside.

At night, we instrumentality the fishy feast up different level with a £55 five-course tasting paper featuring bass, brill and much astatine Circa, the intimate ­restaurant astatine the Sandridge Barton vineyard successful the Dart Valley.

A accidental to research the coastline connected a thrilling, high-speed RIB (rigid inflatable boat) brought a wholly antithetic position of the sea.

Setting retired from the marina, Torquay Water Sports’ Coastal Explorer was a 90-minute thrill thrust crossed Torbay, our enthusiastic skipper afloat of fabulous facts astir the unsocial geography that has seen the country awarded Unesco Global Geopark status.

We whizz past limestone cliffs, secluded coves and beaches earlier spotting birdlife connected Thatcher Rock and astatine Hope’s Nose, a rugged headland.

While we failed to spot the dolphins, seals and porpoises that predominant the coast, the bluish skies and birdlife made up for it.

And much carnal encounters were to come. Behind an unremarkable woody doorway successful a modern gathering successful Torquay lies an astonishing concealed — a labyrinth of prehistoric caves.

At Kents Cavern, guides volition pb you done the analyzable of caves formed 2.5million years ago.

Explorations implicit the past 200 years person uncovered the remains of woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos, cave bears, sabre-toothed cats and hyenas.

And the 1927 discoveries of a jaw fragment and 3 teeth, dating backmost astir 40,000 years ago, were aboriginal confirmed to beryllium the oldest grounds of modern humans successful Europe.

Best vistas

There was much modern history astatine our hotel, the Headland, which was formerly a expansive villa built by the imperial Russian Romanov family.

It has fabulous views, a beauteous terrace and cosy spa. Ask for a country precocious up astatine the backmost for the champion vistas.

It was besides a satellite distant from the different edifice Torquay has go synonymous with — Fawlty Towers.

Although, arsenic Basil erstwhile referred to his woman Sybil successful the ’70s sitcom arsenic a “sabre-toothed tart”, you bash wonderment if they excessively were visitors to the past caverns.