Newton Abbot

Newton Abbot is a town that was built by a railway works and has spent the decades since quietly deciding whether it minded. It has a cider bar that sells cider and nothing you would recognise as a cocktail, a racecourse in the middle of nowhere in particular, and a market that has been going for eight hundred years without ever once becoming a destination. Devon sells itself on thatch and coastline and moorland vistas, and then there is this: the place all of that has to drive through, doing the actual work, with a clay pit up the road and a town centre that never quite got the memo about charm. People who move here for the postcard are disappointed within a fortnight. People who move here for the trains, the prices and the fact that nobody is performing at them tend to stay.