Sidmouth is connected the way a valley town with no railway is connected, which is to say by car and by broadband. Nearly half the town drives to work. Almost three in ten never leave the house to do it. Buses exist and are better than the stereotype, but almost nobody commutes on them. The line that once ran down the valley shut in 1967 and the town has been organising itself around that fact ever since.
There is no station here. The branch line closed in 1967, and the share of residents commuting by train is under 1%, which is what happens when the nearest platform is somebody else's parish. Buses do the local work instead, with 63 stops across the town, though only about 2% of residents commute on one.
What people actually do is drive. About 48% of residents travel to work by car, roughly 29% work from home, about 13% walk and around 2% cycle. Car ownership follows the same logic, with about 36% of households running two or more vehicles and about a fifth running none at all. That last group is the one to think hardest about, because in a town shaped like this, no car means the timetable makes your decisions.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey-time statistics put the nearest town centre at about nine minutes by car, 15 by public transport, 13 by bicycle and 25 on foot. Those are modelled figures for the area rather than a route from any particular front door, and the walk time is the honest one: a quarter of an hour on a bike beats standing at a stop.
Broadband is where the town quietly outperforms its geography. Superfast is available to about 99% of premises and gigabit to about 60%, with none falling below the universal service standard. For a place where working from home is the second most common way to earn a living, that matters more than any bus route.
Mobile coverage is close to complete, with almost every premise reached by at least one operator and about 97% covered by all of them.
For everyday destinations, the same modelled statistics give a doctor's surgery at about nine minutes by car, 13 by public transport and 19 on foot, and a food store at around six minutes whether you drive or walk, which is the single best thing about living in a compact valley. Employment centres run about 12 minutes by car against 32 by public transport. The hospital is the number that reshapes a shortlist: about 38 minutes by car, and about 53 by public transport. One caveat worth carrying: the public transport figures in that set date from 2019 and services have been withdrawn across rural Devon since, so treat them as the optimistic version, while the car and walk times remain reliable.
Current bus provision is better than the modelled figures suggest. Stops average 58 scheduled weekday departures each, with an average of about three and a half buses an hour at the peak, and about 94% of stops with service data have some weekend service. That is a real network rather than a token one, which in a town of this size is not the usual finding.
Road noise is the surprise. About 100% of postcodes sit near or above 65 decibels, the level at which official noise mapping treats road noise as significant, and the loudest band present reaches 75 decibels and above. The town's reputation for peace is a reputation about pace, not about sound.
Electric vehicles are the weak link. There are five public charge points in the area, offering eight connectors between them, of which two are rapid. Charging here is something you plan around rather than something you do while buying milk.
Connectivity lands middling, and the split is stark: excellent broadband, respectable buses, no railway and a hospital run that takes the better part of an hour on public transport. Anyone whose life needs a train is in the wrong valley, and anyone whose life needs a decent upload speed has found the right one.