Missing dog search in Seaton

Seaton sits between two noticeably opposite kinds of ground. The Axe Estuary Wetlands to the east are open marsh and reed bed, exactly the terrain a drone covers fastest and reads most clearly on a thermal camera. The Undercliff to the west is landslip woodland, dense, ancient and largely inaccessible even on foot, and that is the clearest example on this whole site of ground where dense canopy properly limits what a camera can see, worth being upfront about rather than promising more than the aircraft can actually deliver there.

The beach itself and the open ground immediately behind it clear extremely fast from the air, shingle and short grass with very little cover, and a search usually checks this ground first simply because it takes so little time relative to how much of the town it rules out.

Seaton faces almost directly south with the beach only metres from the front row of housing, and that exposure means salt-laden, gale-driven weather off the sea is checked carefully before any flight, in the same way as any of the more exposed coastal towns on this list.

The Victorian and Edwardian terraces along Seaton's seafront are close, historic ground with limited garden space, checked on foot in the same way as the front in most of the coastal towns on this list. The large stock of post-war bungalows on the slopes behind is a different, more open layout, generally with proper if modest gardens, and a dog loose from one of these is checked garden to garden before the search opens out.

The holiday flats and chalets, and the modern estates towards Colyford, add two more kinds of ground: transient, sometimes loosely secured holiday accommodation where gates are not always shut, and ordinary modern estate streets on the edge of town. Axminster, Sidmouth, Lyme Regis and Honiton are the nearest towns to widen towards if the search needs to grow beyond the immediate area.

Seaton beach and the Seaton Tramway, which runs up the valley towards Colyford, are useful landmarks for anyone meeting the search on the ground, and the tramway route itself is worth checking early, since its flat, level track bed gives a dog an easy, obvious way to move inland away from the seafront. The postcode area, EX12, is checked against airspace before the aircraft goes up, in the same way as every other town on this list, and the Jurassic Coast designation either side of the beach is noted before any flight near the cliffs themselves.