Poorly, unless the connection you had in mind is a broadband one. About a third of working residents do not commute anywhere at all. Just over half drive. Under one in a hundred takes a train, and the village stopped having its own station decades ago. The strongest link South Brent has to the outside world arrives down a cable.
Brent station closed in 1964, and a campaign to reopen it has been going for years without producing a platform. The nearest station is Ivybridge, and under 1% of working residents commute by train. Buses have 28 stops across the area, and about 2% of residents use one to get to work.
The commute mix carries the argument that the transport list cannot. About 33% work mainly from home and about 53% drive. Around 6% walk to work and about 1% cycle. About 9% of households have no car, while about 54% run two or more. That last pair is the honest transport statistic here: this is a place organised around a second vehicle rather than a timetable.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey times put the nearest town centre at about 15 minutes by car and about 38 minutes by public transport. Those figures are modelled for the area as a whole rather than measured from any particular front door, which is worth saying once and then remembering. On the same basis, the town centre is about 30 minutes by bicycle and about 82 minutes on foot. Eighty-two minutes is not a commute. It is an afternoon.
Broadband is where the village quietly outperforms its road access. About 81% of premises can order superfast, and about 64% can get ultrafast, with gigabit availability at the same 64%. Mobile coverage from at least one operator reaches about 100% of the area on fourth and fifth generation networks, and about 91% of it gets a signal from every operator.
The rest of the everyday journeys follow the same shape, all of them modelled for the area rather than for a doorstep. A doctor's surgery comes out at about 11 minutes by car, about 23 by public transport and about 38 minutes on foot. The nearest hospital is about 29 minutes by car and about 79 minutes by public transport. A food store is about eight minutes by car and about 24 minutes walking, which is the one journey that stays humane without a vehicle. Employment centres come out at about 62 minutes by car against about 27 by public transport, a result that says more about how the model defines an employment centre than about anybody's morning. All the public transport figures in that set date from 2019, and rural services have not generally been extended since, so treat them with more scepticism than the car and walking times, which depend on distances that have not moved.
Bus stops are not a bus service, and the current service data is more revealing than the stop count. Across those 28 stops, the average is 54 scheduled departures on a weekday and about three an hour at the peak, with 22 of the 28 keeping some weekend service. That is a genuine service by rural standards and still a long way from something you can leave the house without checking.
Noise is the price of being near a fast road. Every postcode in the area sits at or near the 65-decibel threshold that official noise mapping treats as the point where road noise becomes significant, and the loudest band recorded locally reaches 75 decibels. How any individual house sounds depends on the house, the aspect and what is between it and the traffic, none of which a map can tell you. Rail noise does not feature, with no postcodes near that threshold from the railway.
Connectivity is where this village sends the bill. Everything works smoothly if you drive, and very little works at all if you cannot, which is a fine arrangement right up until somebody in the household gives up their licence.