Strimming and overgrowth clearance in Sidmouth

The town sits in a steep sided valley with Peak Hill on one side and Salcombe Hill on the other, both rising well over a hundred and fifty metres, and a great many gardens climb those slopes. A slope you can work down is manageable. A slope you have to work across, with the machine held out to one side, is significantly slower and more tiring, and the estimate reflects it.

Harness mounted brush cutters are the right tool for exactly this, because the weight is carried on the body rather than the arms and the head can be held level on ground that is not. It is still the slowest square metre on this whole list.

The Regency and early Victorian core has plots running back from the front, some of them surprisingly long, walled and reached only through the house or a shared passage. Those are the same problem as Topsham: the cutting is quick and the carrying out is not.

Later villas up the valley sides usually have proper access and a gate, which makes them far quicker per square metre even where the ground is steeper.

Ground along the river is damp, sheltered and grows through most of the year. Nettle, bramble, hogweed and coarse grass along the bank are the standard find, and anything backing onto the water carries a heavier cut than the same width of garden higher up.

The two conditions together, wet bottom and windy top, mean an estimate for Sidmouth depends entirely on where in the valley a property sits, so it is worth saying whether you are on the flat or on the hill.

The valley funnels wind off the sea straight up the town, and the hills either side make it gusty and turbulent rather than steady. That keeps exposed growth in check and leaves the sheltered pockets to run away.

Parking on the esplanade and in the older streets is limited, so a drive or a yard for the trailer is worth mentioning when booking. Sidford and Sidbury, further up the valley, are much easier to work from.

Properties along the top of Peak Hill and Salcombe Hill, and any boundary onto the coast path, take the full weight of the weather and grow tough, low and wiry rather than tall. That is blade work, and it is slower than the same area of soft valley growth.

Connaught Gardens and the esplanade are the usual landmarks at the bottom of the town, and the cliff top estates above them are a different job entirely despite sharing a postcode.

Where a property has both, and plenty do because the plots run up the valley sides, it is often worth splitting the work across two visits rather than trying to take the whole thing in one long and increasingly slow day.