Short answer: Bicton Park north of town has glasshouses and a Victorian fernery, which makes it the local wet-day answer. The High Street cafés are unusually good for a town this size. Beer Quarry Caves, twenty-five minutes east, are entirely underground.
North of town and the obvious answer — sixty-odd acres including an Italian garden, a Victorian fernery and glasshouses. The glass is the point in rain: you get gardens without getting soaked, which almost nowhere else in east Devon offers.
It is dog friendly and has its own parking.
For a town this size the cafés are unusually good, and on a wet morning that matters more than it sounds.
Beer Quarry Caves are Roman-era underground stone quarries explored on a ninety-minute guided tour, and consistently the best-rated attraction in east Devon. Entirely underground, so the weather is irrelevant — but it is eight degrees down there year-round, so take a coat. Phone ahead for tour times.
Seaton Tramway on the way there runs covered trams three miles up the Axe estuary, with hop-on hop-off day tickets and free parking at the Colyton end.
The River Otter path behind the beach is flat and sheltered in places by the valley, and the wetland reserve is better for birds in poor weather than good. It is a considerably easier walk in rain than any clifftop round here.
The beach. Large smooth pebbles in the wet are genuinely treacherous underfoot, and there is no shelter along the front.
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