Dawlish Museum

The Museum sits right in Dawlish town centre, a modest Victorian building that packs far more local character than you'd expect from its size. Inside, you'll find the usual suspects - Victorian artefacts, seaside memorabilia, and information about the town's railway heritage (the line runs spectacularly through the seafront cliffs here). There's also material on Dawlish's Georgian heyday, when it was a proper resort destination before the railways made everywhere accessible.

It's the kind of place that works brilliantly if you're genuinely interested in how a small English seaside town evolved, or if you've got a rainy afternoon to fill between beach visits. Kids under ten might find it a bit dry unless they're already hooked on local history. Allow an hour, tops - it's not vast.

The real draw is how it fits into a holiday park stay nearby. Lady's Mile Holiday Park is barely over a mile away, as is Golden Sands, so you could easily pop in on a drizzly morning without it being a major expedition. Leadstone Camping and Dawlish Sands are similarly close by. The museum costs very little to enter and gives you genuine context for why you're here - the railway engineering, the why of the cliffs, the whole Victorian obsession with sea air and health.

If you're staying at one of the bigger parks like Haven Devon Cliffs a few miles out, it's worth a visit before you head to the town's decent ice cream shops and fish and chips. Not unmissable, but solid value for a wet-weather option.