Hotel Riviera ( Sidmouth )

Hotel Riviera, with its echoes of the South of France and prime position on the seafront, is the choice for the discerning in search of relaxation and quieter pleasures. Sidmouth has retained its exclusivity and elegance since Regency times, when it became a fashionable watering place and attracted ’the people of quality’. Most prominent among these visitors were the Duke and Duchess of Kent with their infant daughter Victoria, later to become Queen. The resort’s natural beauty and excellent climate also captivated many famous literary figures, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Coleridge, Thackeray, Jane Austen and H.G. Wells. Thackeray knew the district well and described it in ‘Pendennis’, in which Sidmouth is thinly disguised as ‘Baymouth’.