Combe Martin

Combe Martin is a village that took one look at a valley, decided the only sensible thing to do was build the entire place along the bottom of it, and then kept going for two miles until it ran out of hill. What it has instead of a centre is a road with a beach at one end, a pub named after a card game at the other, and a strip of holiday lets in between that fills up in July and goes quiet enough in February to hear the water. The silver mines closed, the strawberry fields went, and the tourists turned up, which is roughly the story of every pretty bit of the North Devon coast, except here the sea is at the bottom of your street rather than a scenic twenty minutes away. People move here for the walk to the water and stay because the alternative is admitting they now drive half an hour for anything that isn't a pasty.