Meanwhile, there are two prime ways of getting to Teignmouth: the one a threepenny journey by train from Dawlish station, the loveliest threepenny railway ride in the kingdom; the other a shockingly hilly climb up by the high road that goes over Lea Mount, and so, in a series of sharp rises and falls brings you, at one mile from Teignmouth, to a breakneck descent into the town, usually ending, for cyclists some few years ago, in a pantomime-trick disappearance through the window of the “Dawlish Inn” and a removal, as the case might be, to the hospital or the cemetery. But more scientific brakes have happily neutralised these dangers. [Illustration: THE PARSON AND CLERK ROCKS.] There is, however, a delightful variant of this road journey that cannot too greatly be praised. This is found when coming to the cross-lanes in the hollow at Holcombe, one mile from Lea Mount, by turning to the left down a tree-shaded way known as “Smugglers’ Lane.” A short distance brings the explorer to a sight of the sea again, glimpsed between the stone arches of a railway-bridge spanning a tiny cove or inlet. A walk through the arches on to the sands, if the tide be out, or the ascent of a dozen steps up to the sea-wall, if it be in, brings the stranger into the best and easiest, and certainly, into the most beautiful, approach to Teignmouth, by the sea the whole way and under the shadow of the tremendous red cliffs, at whose foot the railway, by the daring of Brunel, is made to run along the most massive of sea-walls. The engineer here wrought more picturesquely than he knew, and performed an inestimable service to the public by providing a ten-foot wide masonry pathway nearly two miles and a half long, where the contemplative visitor has the trains on one side and the sea on the other; and where he may, when it blows great guns off the sea, witness such a spouting and a buffeting of furious waves against the wall as scarce to be equalled around the coast. The railway has here, at any rate, left the shore more picturesque than it found it, and the trains themselves give a last touch of romance. You see them, in summer, coming down from London, a wondering and expectant face thrust from every window: the faces of holiday-makers enraptured with the scene. You see the holiday-makers again, a little later, with a deep tan colour, but with expressions wistful and melancholy; returning home, and taking a long lingering glance before the Parson Tunnel finally occults the view.