Town crier Roger Bourgein writes for the Journal.

Greetings citizens and visitors to Exmouth, this jewel set midst Devon’s red cliffs, green hills, and silver seas.

Ah yes, those red cliffs, that bedrock, that Jurassic heritage, that sturdy foot soldier with shoulders broad enough to support the extraordinary palette used by nature to give us - the green.

From the mighty gnarled oak who rules over his fiefdom with stark, hard, majesty, the horse and sweet chestnut about to erupt like carillons of colour not sound.

Our fields and moors, our Dartmoor, Exmoor, Mendips and Blackdown Hills. Fractured with gully and stream and river, that with sound from quiet gurgle to shrill tinkle wend paths toward the mother lode.

That blue beautiful bustier, potable to brackish to salt that caresses our red cliffs.

So many moods, sometimes a lover, sometimes a killer, but for those of us lucky to be a neighbour always awe inspiring. Poets painters writers composers dancers, all draw life force from that flickering palette of silver seas.

The poet in me suddenly remembers that for most of my life I have been an engineer. A man of steels, threads, stresses and fractures.

But though the world of red cliffs, green hills and silver seas sounds soft and gentle I never forget it has powers and forces that will always overwhelm man the engineer. So now, I wait for the free gratis bounty of colours and scents and hues to make me draw a deep, deep lung of breath then exhale with a huge grin, eyes shining and that face of welcome, ‘nice to meet you’, that always marks the Town Crier.

Short words but ‘tis what I wanted to say. Cheerio