Best place to live in Devon

I live in a small village in Mid Devon - moved here from Notting Hill (into a 300-year-old house) when I was 50 and loved it, although did experience very strong cultural withdrawal symptoms to begin with. Mid Devon (Devon's Heartland) is delightful - stunning landscapes, and within easy reach of Exeter, Exmoor and Dartmoor and the North and South Devon coastlines, but without such large numbers of tourists/holidaymakers, who tend to flock to the coast.

But now I'm only three years off 70, living in a small village is no longer ideal, especially as we no longer have a shop or post office. Bus services are few and far between, so a car is essential and that means having to spend far too much on petrol. The village doesn't have mains gas so many of us are reliant on oil for heating our homes and that is now a frighteningly expensive option, which it wasn't 17 years ago. So, I'm contemplating a move to a smaller, more modern, more eco-friendly house in a small town, either in Mid Devon or just across the border in West Somerset (e.g. Dulverton, Wiveliscombe) where I can walk to the shops, to a cafe, to the library etc.

Thanks for that. I quite like Crediton myself. Queen Elizabeth's a decent enough school and the Crediton Bookshop an actual bookshop which is rare. Even rarer is that it's apparently now a community bookshop; a sort of Provident Society set-up. This model is often used to buy village pubs etc but I've never heard of bookshop doing it. Good luck to them.

Usually base in Totnes when we travel south. Maternal family all Devon, apart from Grandad who comes for across the Tamar...shhhh don't tell! Finding the hill to my cream teas a bit steeper every year....!