Bere Alston

Bere Alston sits on a hump of land in the Tamar Valley with a railway station that survived Beeching by accident and a branch line that terminates here because British Rail ran out of enthusiasm before it ran out of track. The village once got rich digging silver and arsenic out of the hillsides, which explains both the listed engine houses and the fact that half the ground underneath has been hollowed out by men who never filled anything back in. It is the kind of place where the market gardening heritage is celebrated on a noticeboard and the actual daffodil fields went to grazing decades ago. Beautiful, quiet, and further from a hospital than anyone quite admits until they need one.