Beer
Beer is a working fishing village as well as a picturesque tourist attraction. Visitors can sit on the 'sun trap' beach at one of the beach cafés amongst the fishing boats and forget the world and its troubles.
With its own small bay enclosed by chalk cliffs the village nestles in valley with picturesque stone houses and cottages built on many different levels.
The beach is reached by the gently sloping Fore Street down which runs the Beer Brook. Sea Hill at the bottom of Fore Street runs onto the pebble beach which although steeply sloping is perfectly safe for bathing.
The beach is also a working beach for the fisherman whose families have fished here for generations and their fishing boats are still launched from the beach and winched back on to the shore. The sheltered bay in the past allowed the fishermen of Beer to put to sea in weather which prevented other Devon and Dorset fishermen from leaving their more exposed beaches.
Fresh fish, crabs and scallops caught that day in the Bay can be bought from the fish mongers shop on the beach.
The seafaring skills of the Beer fishermen were put to use in the past to improve their impoverished lifestyles by making use of Beers isolation and to smuggle in contraband goods such as, brandy, tobacco and tea. Much of these smuggled goods were bought in from Alderney in the Channel Islands though some contraband goods were bought over from France.
With the Beer seaman gaining the reputation of being the ‘Kings of the Smugglers’ they soon attracted the attention of the Revenue Men and a constant game of ‘cat and mouse’ was played to seize the contraband goods and catch the smugglers and their accomplices.
Now, Beer is a romantic Devon village visited by people from all over the world, in the summer months there are fishing and boat trips along the coast on one of the Beer Luggers.
A walk along Fore Street will take in tea shops and restaurants, art galleries, specialist small shops and welcoming Inns.