Connected enough to live, not connected enough to commute. Half the working population drives. About one in three works from home. Roughly one in a hundred takes a train, which is what happens when the nearest platform is in another town. The town runs on cars and broadband, and it has quietly organised its whole daily life around that fact.
There is no railway station here. The line that once served the town closed in 1967, and parts of the old route now carry a walking and cycling path towards Exmouth, which is a better outcome than most closed branch lines managed. The nearest station is Exmouth Rail Station, and about 1% of working residents commute by train. Buses do the public-transport heavy work instead, with 30 stops recorded in the area, though only about 1% of residents use one to get to work.
The commute mix is where the argument settles. About 50% of working residents drive, about 33% work from home, about 8% walk and about 2% cycle. Car ownership follows: roughly 39% of households run two or more vehicles, and about 13% have none at all. That last group is the one to watch, because being car-free here is a genuine lifestyle choice rather than a passive default, and it works only if your week fits inside the town boundary.
For the nearest town centre, the Department for Transport's modelled journey times put it at about 17 minutes by car, about 24 by public transport, about 33 by bicycle and about 90 minutes on foot. These are modelled figures for the area rather than a route from any particular front door. The 90-minute walk is the honest headline: this is not a town you stroll out of.
For everyday destinations, the same modelling gives a doctor's surgery at about 8 minutes by car, 11 by public transport and 14 on foot, and a food store at about 8 minutes by car and 14 on foot. Employment centres sit at about 16 minutes by car and about 32 by public transport. A hospital is the outlier at about 38 minutes by car and about 78 minutes by public transport, which is a long time to be looking out of a bus window with a hospital appointment letter on your lap. The public transport figures in that set date from 2019 and services have been cut across rural Devon since, so treat them with more caution than the car and walking times, which are governed by distance and have not moved.
The current bus picture is better than the commute share suggests. Stops average around 40 scheduled weekday departures each, every stop has some weekend service, and at peak the average works out at about one bus an hour. One an hour is a service you plan around rather than turn up for, but it exists, it runs on Saturdays and Sundays, and plenty of comparable coastal towns cannot say either.
Broadband is the quiet strength. Gigabit connections reach about 61% of premises, ultrafast the same, and superfast covers all of them. Nothing here falls below the universal service obligation, which for a town with no railway and a hospital 38 minutes away is a useful thing to be able to say before signing a remote-working contract.
Mobile coverage is close to complete. About 100% of the area gets fourth or fifth generation service from at least one operator, and about 97% from all of them, so the network you already pay for will almost certainly work.
Electric vehicles are the gap. The area has one public charge point, offering two connections, of which one is rapid. Charging here is something you schedule, not something that happens while you buy vegetables, and anyone arriving with an electric car should assume home charging is the plan rather than a convenience.
Road noise is more widespread than the town's reputation implies. Every postcode sits near or above the 65-decibel threshold that official mapping treats as the point where road noise becomes significant, and the loudest band present reaches 75 decibels. That reflects mapping across the whole built-up area rather than any prediction about a particular bedroom window.
Connectivity is the middling part of the picture, and honestly so: excellent digital links, a workable bus service, and a total absence of rail that no amount of coastal charm compensates for. If your job needs a train, this town will cost you a car and an hour before you have started.