Short answer: Seaton Tramway runs covered cars as well as open-topped ones, and winter is the good season for estuary birds. Seaton Wetlands is free with level paths and hides. Beer Quarry Caves are eight degrees year-round.
Seaton's attraction is the Axe estuary, and estuaries are at their best in the cold months — more birds, better light, nobody about. The tramway runs three miles up it to Colyton, and covered cars run alongside the open-topped ones.
The Colyton terminus has free parking, a good café doing home-made cakes and scones, and clean facilities, which makes it a sensible way round when the seafront is being blown about.
Seaton Wetlands is free, with bird hides, level accessible paths and all-terrain mobility scooters available to hire. A hide is a building with a roof — which makes this one of the very few outdoor attractions in east Devon that genuinely works in bad weather.
Beer Quarry Caves, five minutes west, sit at a constant eight degrees all year. In August that is a relief; in January it means it is warmer down there than up here. Roman-era underground quarries on a ninety-minute guided tour, and the best-rated attraction in east Devon.
Winter timetables are reduced — phone ahead for tour times rather than turning up.
The Riverside Depot, where the trams are kept and restored, runs tours. Indoors, and better than it sounds if anyone in the party likes machinery.
Winter opening is where online listings are least reliable. Ring before you drive — several places here show as closed on Google and answer the phone perfectly happily.
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