Poorly, and the village has its own railway station, which makes that harder to explain than it should be. Half the working population drives. More than a third works from home. Almost nobody takes the bus, largely because there is barely a bus to take. The broadband is better than the roads by a distance. Calstock is well connected to the internet and loosely attached to everything else.
The railway is real, and it is a branch line. Calstock Rail Station sits on it, with Gunnislake Rail Station, Bere Alston Rail Station and Bere Ferrers Rail Station strung along the same short stretch of valley. Despite four stations within reach, 2% of residents commute by train. Buses do worse: six stops in the area and 1% of residents using them to get to work.
What people actually do is drive or stay in. Just over half of residents, 51%, drive to work. Another 37% work from home, which is a striking share for a village of this size and tells you exactly what has been holding the place together. Five per cent walk. Almost half of households, 48%, run two or more cars, and only 10% have none at all. In Calstock the car is not a lifestyle preference, it is the infrastructure.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics put the nearest town centre at 18 minutes by car against 27 by public transport. That gap is smaller than the raw geography suggests, which is the branch line doing quiet work, and it is also the flattering comparison in this answer.
Broadband is the genuine strength. Gigabit service reaches 85% of premises, superfast reaches 92%, and only 1% sit below the universal service obligation. For a village strung down a wooded valley, that is a better result than most commuter suburbs manage.
Mobile is similar. At least one operator provides fourth or fifth generation service across effectively all of the area, and all operators together cover 95%.
The practical upshot is that a Calstock life works if it is built around one or two cars and a decent home office, and creaks badly if it is not. Anyone planning to commute daily on public transport should test the actual timetable before exchanging contracts rather than after.
On the full modelled picture, and these are national statistics modelled for the area rather than a route measured from any particular door, the nearest town centre is 18 minutes by car, 27 by public transport, 33 by bicycle and 93 minutes on foot. That last figure is not a walking option. It is the distance stated in the least useful available unit.
The same source puts a general practitioner surgery at 18 minutes by car, 29 by public transport and 93 on foot, and a hospital at 40 minutes by car or 87 by public transport. A food store is closer to hand at 9 minutes by car and 23 minutes' walk. Employment centres land at 39 minutes by public transport and 88 by car, which is one of the oddities that modelled journey times throw up and worth checking against your own route. One caveat runs through all of it: the distances to fixed destinations are stable, but the public transport figures date from 2019 and rural services have been cut since, so treat those with more suspicion than the car and walk times.
Bus provision is the current number rather than the modelled one, and it is thin. Across the three stops with service data, weekday departures average 30 per stop, dropping to two at peak hour. Every one of those stops has some weekend service. Two buses in the hour when everyone needs one is not a network, it is a gesture.
Noise is the consolation. No postcodes in Calstock sit near or above 65 decibels on the road noise mapping, the level at which official mapping treats road noise as significant, and none do on the rail mapping either. Whatever the valley costs you in access, it does not charge you in traffic.
Connectivity is the weakest part of the Calstock case. There is a station, there is fast broadband, and there is very little else, so the village works beautifully for people whose jobs come down a cable and awkwardly for everyone whose job is somewhere else.