Thatched roofs, dry-stone walls, and a churchyard that's older than most countries you could name — North Bovey looks exactly like the version of Dartmoor that people picture when they say they want to escape somewhere. There's no high street to speak of, no queue outside a bakery, just a green, a pub, and a scatter of stone cottages that have clearly been here a very long time. It attracts people who've already done the commuter thing and are done with it: the median age sits north of 57, close to two decades above the national figure, and this reads less as a village in transition than a village that settled a while ago and is comfortable with that. There isn't a rail station in the picture here, and that absence is itself the message — this is a place you drive from, not one you commute out of. Schooling nearby runs through Widecombe-in-the-Moor Primary, a small academy on the moor rather than a market-town institution, which suits the families who are here for the landscape rather than the school run logistics. Housing tells its own story: what little sells is overwhelmingly detached and freehold, with a median sale price above a million pounds against a national figure closer to £280,000 — this is not a starter-home village, and the tiny sample size (just eight sales) tells you how rarely anything here changes hands at all. Against Teignbridge, the district it sits within, prices run dramatically higher too, so a "for sale" board on this lane is a rare and expensive event, not a routine listing. Life here moves at the pace the moor sets. With 85 hectares of green space for a population of well under 300, open land is not a weekend treat but the default backdrop, and the walking, riding and quiet-pub end of rural life is what fills the time rather than restaurants or nightlife — there's little of the latter to speak of, and that's clearly by design rather than deficiency. The safety grade here is genuinely strong, among the better end of the national scale, though it's worth naming the one grade that sits slightly out of step: the trend on safety is marked as worsening, and violence and sexual offences account for the largest single share of the (very small) crime count. With only ten incidents recorded across the year, a handful of cases can shift that share dramatically, so it's a detail to note rather than a reason for alarm — but it's the one thread in an otherwise reassuring picture worth pulling on if you're weighing this seriously. This is a village for people who've already decided that space, quiet and a view of the moor outweigh convenience — those retiring, relocating with capital behind them, or wanting a second home in a genuinely rural setting. It will frustrate anyone who needs a station platform, a late supper out, or new-build affordability nearby; it will suit those for whom the absence of all that is precisely the point.