Uffculme

Uffculme is a Devon village that got its own secondary school, which in these parts is the equivalent of being granted city status, and it has never quite got over it. The place runs on a woollen mill that stopped being an industry and became a museum, a church tower that has outlasted every business on the street beneath it, and a stretch of the M5 close enough to be useful and far enough to be somebody else's problem. People move here from Exeter and Taunton because they wanted countryside without the commitment, then spend a decade telling visitors about the walk along the Culm as though they discovered it. It is a good village pretending to be a small town, and the pretence is the most charming thing about it.