Not very, and the car on the drive is the only reason it functions. Nearly six in ten households run two cars or more. About one in ten runs none at all. Half of working residents drive to their job and almost four in ten work in the same building they sleep in. The trains and the buses exist here. They are closer to a hobby than a commute.
The railway is the surprise. Umberleigh has its own station, with Portsmouth Arms, Chapelton, Kings Nympton and Eggesford strung along the same valley line and Barnstaple at the northern end of it. Five stations within reach of one rural area is more than most Devon villages manage, and under 1% of working residents use a train to get to work. There are 183 bus stops across the area and under 1% commute by bus. A station you can see from the road is not the same as a service you can build a working week around.
What people actually do is drive. About 51% of working residents commute by car, about 38% work from home, about 5% walk and under 1% cycle. Roughly 58% of households have two or more vehicles and about 9% have none. In a place where two cars is the normal setting, the household running one is the one doing the negotiating every morning.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey times put the nearest town centre at about 20 minutes by car, about 72 minutes by public transport, about 38 minutes by bicycle and about 94 minutes on foot. Walking to town takes an hour and a half, which settles the question of whether this is a place you can live in without wheels. These are modelled figures for the area rather than a route from any particular front door.
The same statistics put a doctor's surgery at about 15 minutes by car, about 27 by bicycle and about 57 by public transport, with the walk running to over an hour. A hospital is about 31 minutes by car and about 93 minutes by public transport. A food store is about 12 minutes by car and about 52 minutes on foot. Employment centres come out at about 54 minutes by car and about 27 by public transport, which is the one journey the timetable wins. All of those public transport figures were modelled in 2019 and have aged badly as rural services have been withdrawn, so the car and walking times are the ones to trust.
Current bus data tells a plainer story than the stop count does. The average stop sees about 32 scheduled departures across a whole weekday and fewer than two in the peak hour, though about 77% of stops with published timetables do get some weekend service. Thirty-two departures spread across a day sounds generous until you want a specific one at a specific time.
Broadband is where the frustration bites hardest for anyone planning to work from home, which is most of the people moving here. Gigabit connections reach about 16% of premises and superfast about 49%, with roughly 2% sitting below the universal service obligation, the legal minimum speed a household is entitled to. Mobile is the better performer, with about 96% of the area covered by every operator and virtually all of it covered by at least one.
Road noise is close to a non-issue. Under 1% of postcodes sit near or above 65 decibels, the threshold at which official mapping treats road noise as significant, and the loudest band recorded anywhere in the area is 70 decibels.
For electric vehicles there are 12 public charge points across the area, offering 26 connections in total, of which 3 are rapid. Three rapid units means charging is something you plan around rather than something you do while picking up milk.
Connectivity is the poorest thing about living here, and it is poor in a specific, fixable-by-you way: buy the second car, or do not buy the house. The line through the valley is a genuine asset for a day out and a near irrelevance for a working week.