page_title: Exmouth
section_title: Geography
hierarchical_section_title: Exmouth / Geography
caption_attribution_description: English: The sea front at Exmouth, South Devon, England, looking west. This town is the westward end of the Dorset and East Devon World Heritage Site, extending 95 miles (155km) to Swanage in Dorset. The Heritage Site is also called the Jurassic Coast, although Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods are represented.
context_page_description: Exmouth is a port town, civil parish and seaside resort, sited on the east bank of the mouth of the River Exe and 11 miles southeast of Exeter.
  In 2011 it had a population of 34,432, making Exmouth the 5th most populous settlement in Devon.
context_section_description: The town is defined by the sea and river frontages (each about a mile long), and stretches around 2.5 miles (4 km) inland, along a north-easterly axis.  The docks lie at the western corner of this rectangle, where the river passes through a narrow passage into the sea, the mouth of the estuary being nearly closed by Dawlish Warren on the opposite shore of the river. Dawlish Warren is a natural sand spit and is home to rare wildlife and plants, part of which is a nature reserve and restricted access. The sea frontage forms a sandy two mile long beach; at its eastern end, the town is limited by the cliffs of the High Land of Orcombe, a National Trust-owned open space which rises to a peak at Orcombe Point.
  Geologically, the low hill known as "The Beacon", in the centre of the present town, is formed of breccias that are an outcrop of a similar formation on the west side of the Exe estuary.  The rising land on which the town has grown is formed of New Red Sandstone.  This solid land is surrounded by mudflats and sandspits, some of which have been stabilised and now form part of the  land on which the town is built, and some of which remain as tidal features in the estuary and off the coast. The outflow from the river flows eastwards, parallel to the beach for some distance, limited by sandbanks that are exposed at low tide. Many of the buildings on the reclaimed land are fitted with pumps to extract water from their basements during high tide.
caption: The seafront, looking west towards Dawlish Warren
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