Connected enough to be useful, not enough to be convenient. There is a railway station, which is more than most villages this size can claim. Almost nobody uses it to get to work. Nearly three in ten work from home, and more than half of households keep two cars or more. The broadband is better than the buses, which is the modern definition of rural.
Templecombe Rail Station is the real asset, sitting on the line between London Waterloo and Exeter Saint Davids. It closed in 1966 under the Beeching cuts and reopened in 1983 after local pressure, which is a fight very few villages have won. Castle Cary and Sherborne stations cover what that line does not. For all of that, under 1% of residents commute by train, and under 1% by bus. There are 60 bus stops across the area, which sounds generous until you look at what stops at them.
How people actually get to work explains the place better than any timetable. About 57% drive. About 29% work from home. Around 6% walk and about 1% cycles. Roughly 53% of households run two cars or more, and only about 9% have none at all, which is the clearest statement of intent available: this is a village that solved its transport problem privately and stopped waiting for anyone to solve it publicly.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey times put the nearest town centre at about 20 minutes by car and about 43 minutes on public transport. Cycling takes 40 minutes. Walking takes about 104 minutes, which is not a journey, it is an afternoon. These are modelled for the area rather than measured from any particular front door, and the public transport figures date from 2019, so they describe services as they were before the last round of cuts rather than as they are.
The same modelling puts a doctor's surgery at about 16 minutes by car, roughly 37 minutes on public transport and about 81 minutes on foot. A hospital is around 33 minutes driving and about 71 minutes by public transport. A food shop is about 12 minutes by car and roughly 51 minutes walking. Employment centres sit at about 26 minutes by car and around 31 minutes on public transport, which is the one comparison where the bus and the car are in the same conversation. Everything else on that list is a car journey with a theoretical walking alternative attached for completeness.
Current bus data tells a plainer story than the stop count does. Stops average around 22 scheduled departures on a weekday, roughly two at peak hour, and about 58% of stops have any weekend service at all. Two buses in the peak is not a commute, it is a lift you have to plan your life around.
Broadband is where the area quietly outperforms. Gigabit-capable service reaches about 84% of premises, superfast about 95%, and no premises fall below the universal service obligation. Mobile coverage from at least one operator reaches close to 100% of premises, with about 97% covered by all operators, so the dead-spot problem that plagues a lot of rural Somerset is not this village's problem.
Road noise is worth knowing about before viewing on a quiet Sunday. All of the area's postcodes sit near mapped road noise at or above 65 decibels, the level at which official noise mapping treats road noise as significant, and the loudest mapped band present reaches 75 decibels. No postcodes are near mapped rail noise at that threshold, which is a separate source and a separate answer. None of that predicts how loud any particular house will be, but it does mean the countryside here is not the silent kind.
Electric vehicle charging is thin but not absent: seven public charge points with 24 connectors between them, of which five are rapid. Five rapid units means charging is something you can do while shopping rather than something you build an evening around, provided nobody beats you to them.
Connectivity is the weakest thing about this village, and it is weak in a specific way rather than a general one. The infrastructure exists, the station included, and almost nobody uses it, because two cars and a fast broadband line answer the question more reliably than a timetable does.