Strimming and overgrowth clearance in Teignmouth

Ground climbs steeply behind the front, and the Victorian villas up the slopes have gardens built in stages against retaining walls. Working them means carrying kit up and cut material down, and the fuel, the machine and the rake all make that journey more than once.

Old retaining walls need care. A metal blade catching a mortar joint or a loose stone does damage that costs far more than the minutes saved, so anything within reach of a wall face is cut with a nylon head and taken back by hand where it matters.

Teignmouth has two very different aspects. The estuary side is sheltered, damp and grows thickly, with reed and coarse grass on anything close to the water. The seaward side takes easterly gales driving up the Channel, which is unusual for Devon and burns growth back on the exposed faces.

That means the same size of plot can be a two hour job on one side of the town and a half day on the other, and it is why the postcode alone is not enough for an estimate here.

A good share of the housing on the front and the slopes behind it is let or used seasonally, and a garden nobody looks at between October and March is a garden that needs a proper cut before the season. Those bookings tend to cluster in early spring and are worth arranging ahead.

For managing agents the useful part is usually the photographs afterwards, so a record exists of the state it was left in. They come as standard.

Parking on the front and the streets behind is tight, and the hill roads are narrow with limited turning space for a pickup and trailer. Where a drive or a yard can be used it makes a real difference to the hours.

Broadmeadow and the higher post-war housing are much simpler, with drives, gates and space to work from, and they price closer to a standard suburban clearance.

The Bishopsteignton road and the ground running up the estuary are quieter, greener and sheltered, with larger plots and mature boundaries. Growth there is thick and steady rather than salt burnt, and it is more like mid Devon than seaside work.

Shaldon across the bridge is close enough to include in the same run, and where two jobs can share a morning it saves both of them the travel time inside the hours.

Between the front, the hillside villas and the higher post-war housing there are three different kinds of job in this town, and the difference between them is measured in access and gradient rather than in square metres.