The Wild Side of Sidmouth

The ‘Learning Community’ mission is to help local residents, walkers, and lifelong learners "read" these landscape connections. By understanding how our valley functions as an ecological system—and recognising the measures needed to aid nature's recovery—we gain the knowledge and vocabulary to champion our local environment. When walking with family, friends, or grandchildren, that understanding can be passed on, transforming a casual stroll into an informed appreciation of the living landscape around us.

The 'Community Hub' is the glue that holds the 'Guided Learning' programme together. It is where you will find the introduction page to the latest texts and where you can interact with other learners through the 'comments' system or engage with other activities that might be appropriate for certain topics. It is a good place to find links to previous items you may have missed.

The ‘Wild Side of Sidmouth’ is made up of three main themes, each theme has six topics and each topic has eight threads; that is 200 pages of information! Dipping in for a single piece of information is easy enough, but what if you want to understand the bigger picture? What if you want to know what influences our natural environment, how our local habitats were formed, or how adjacent wildlife corridors link together? Would that be overwhelming? The ‘Guided Learning’ programme has been created to help those seeking a deeper understanding of the natural environment of Sidmouth; its ‘wild side’. It is a guided tour around the key components of the town’s natural ecological features.

While the 'Guided Learning' programme explores the underlying drivers and ecological networks across the parish, 'Spotlight Learning' takes a direct, focused look at individual locations. Across our area lie fifty distinct wild places—ranging from prominent clifftops and ancient beech woods to quiet churchyards, hidden stream banks, and forgotten sunken lanes. Each week throughout the year, our 'Spotlight 'series illuminates a single local site and the fascinating wildlife that calls it home.

Across The Wild Side of Sidmouth, we have catalogued hundreds of pages covering local geology, coastal and river processes, habitat classifications, and profiles of 50 local nature reserves and corridors. While our website arranges these by theme and our ’Guided Learning’ and ‘Spotlight Learning’ programmes  deliver them step-by-step, you might occasionally have a very specific question.  You ask the questions, the 'Notebook' provides the answers.

If you are interested in the natural world, and also a Facebook user, then the 'Wild Side of Sidmouth' nature page is for you! The 'Wild Side' website is a very specific project looking at the wild places of the lower Sid Valley, the factors that influence the natural environment, the primary habitats found and the biodversity of the various networks of sites of natural interest.  This is, of course, just a small part of a much bigger picture. On the 'Wild Side of Sidmouth' Facebook page we follow posts from several organisation and groups and bring them all together in one place for our users benefit.

Inspired to go out and take effective action to further nature recovery in the Sidmouth area? Are you ready to join the growing band of volunteers who give whatever time and effort they can afford to the cause? Here are some of the groups actively involved in nature conservation in the Sidmouth area who would love to hear from you.