For the hitchhiker in a hurry, Exeter By Night is the ideal 5 step solution to your sightseeing needs. This tour is for Hardened Drinkers only.

1. Tour the Topsham Ten
2. Meet the locals
3. Sample the food
4. See the sights
5. Check in for the night

1) Tour the Topsham Ten

[Did have map here, but can't link to it anymore. You'll just have to wait until there is an image upload facility @ h2g2 ]

Start the night early with this infamous pub crawl in the historical harbour of Topsham at Exeter's southern limits. The aim is to get round Topsham's 10 pubs before the last train¹ back to the city centre. How early you start depends on how quickly you can bolt and how many pints you plan to drink in each pub; allow 40 min's for staggering between pubs. Good luck!

Top tip: if you go in a big group, you can club together and hire your own St John's Ambulance first-aider for the night. This is completely unnecessary, but seriously stylish!

2) Meet the locals

Back in Exeter proper, you'll find the Timepiece on Little Castle Street is a convenient place to check out the local talent. If you did the Topsham Ten properly you'll be really impressed; you'll have no chance of pulling though, seeing as you're utterly bladdered. If you get there too early to hit the dancefloor, have a few 'for the stairs' in the ground floor bar first.

3) Sample the food

You will by now be ravenous, and when you've been expelled from the club your stomach will tell you a kebab would be an excellent idea. The kebab shops on Sidwell Street are just five minutes away and once again, if you did The Ten correctly, your mouth will water when you see what's in the windows. (There are even vegetarian kebabs, though if you've remembered you're a veggie at this stage you must be immune to alcohol.)

4) See the sights

Clutching your pitta-wrapped delicacy, you may wonder what else the Cathedral City of Exeter has to offer. The easiest way to see the lot is to clamber onto the roof of the Methodist Church opposite the kebab shops, which can be accessed by a fire escape ladder round the back. You'll get a cracking view of all of Exeter's major sights, as long as you don't fall unconscious (or just fall) on your way up.

5) Check in for the night

It's been a hard night's tourism, and you've earned your shuteye. If you're lucky, you were spotted on the roof by a policeman, who will be happy to offer you a cell for the night. (You may have to negotiate a drunk and disorderly charge though.)

If you're unlucky, or just uncoordinated, then you fell off the roof and are on your way either to hospital or to the morgue. Either way, it's still a free bed (or slab).

If you have somehow avoided the Fuzz², the Grim Reaper and personal injury, you'll just have to hope your roof-top antics were noticed by a suitably impressionable member of the appropriate sex.