Okehampton

Okehampton is a town that spent a thousand years being on the way to somewhere else and has finally made peace with it. The Normans built a castle here, the Courtenays rebuilt it, Henry VIII beheaded the owner and took the lot, and the town's response across five centuries has been to carry on selling wool, then carry on selling nothing much, then get a bypass and consider the matter closed. The moor starts at the end of the road and does not care about any of it. What you get is a market town with genuine granite in its bones and a car park where the excitement lives, which is either exactly what you want or a slow-motion trap, and most people know which within one winter.