Great Torrington

Great Torrington sits on a hill above the Torridge with the smugness of a town that once mattered and has quietly decided it still does. It won a Civil War, blew up its own church with seventy barrels of gunpowder while the prisoners were still inside, lost its railway to Beeching, and turned the trackbed into a cycle path that now brings in more visitors than the trains ever did. The volunteering is relentless: turn up, express a mild interest in anything, and you will be on a committee by Thursday. It is the kind of place where people dress as Roundheads for fun and nobody finds that odd, which tells you everything about whether you will fit.