Short answer: Sidmouth's esplanade is completely level and easy with a buggy, but the beach itself is large smooth pebbles that no pram will cross. Time a visit for low tide, when sand appears below the stones. Connaught Gardens are free and the Clock Tower café is the best stop.
Sidmouth is unusually flat for a Devon seaside town — the esplanade runs level along the front and the town behind it is largely on the flat too. Pushing a buggy around here is genuinely easy, which is more than can be said for Salcombe or Ilfracombe.
The beach is the problem. Sidmouth's shingle is made of large smooth stones — Budleigh Buns, weathered out of the Triassic cliffs — and they are awkward to walk on, let alone push anything across. There is a paved promenade behind for most of the length, and that is where to stay.
On a falling tide, golden sand appears below the pebbles and the beach becomes a completely different proposition — firmer ground and something a toddler can actually dig. Turn up at high water and you get a narrow strip of large stones.
This is the one town in this guide where checking the tide table is not optional. It matters more than the parking, more than the weather, and more than where you eat.
The western beach below Connaught Gardens has the better rock pools and a gentler shelf into the water, which reviewers describe as good for bathing. It is reached by a steep slope or the listed wooden steps — so getting a buggy down is a two-adult job, or you carry the toddler and leave the pram at the top.
Free, clifftop, well kept, with the Clock Tower café inside — sea views from the tables, home-made cakes and garden seating outside in good weather. Level ground, easy with a pram, and the best place in Sidmouth to sit with a small child. Closed Tuesdays.
Milsons Point on the High Street does the best breakfast in town on level ground. The Pea Green Boat on the esplanade has seating inside and out facing the sea, with service coming out to you if you sit outdoors — useful when a toddler will not sit still indoors.
The red cliffs here are actively unstable with repeated rock falls and sections of Jacob's Ladder beach fenced off at times. Keep well away from the cliff base wherever it is signed.
Sidmouth has almost nothing indoors. Twenty minutes east, Beer Quarry Caves are underground but the tour is ninety minutes, which reviewers note is a long stretch for younger children. Seaton Tramway is the better bet — covered trams, twenty-minute frequency, and the wetlands halfway.
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