Peter Moore on life in Devon

When I was working for the GP out of hours service taking the phone calls in Totnes I received a call from a woman who had rented a holiday cottage near Kingsbridge. She had fallen and hurt her shoulder. I took a more detailed history but it was clear she needed an X ray.

“I’m afraid you will have to go to A and E” I explained. 

“Where’s the nearest hospital?” she asked.

“You can either go west to Derriford Hospital in Plymouth or east to Torbay Hospital”.

“That’s ridiculous”, she was clearly annoyed. “There’s got to be a nearer hospital. Isn’t there one in Kingsbridge”.

“There is but it’s a community hospital with no A and E”.

She then became angry and hung up. I’ve no idea whether she did make it to an A and E department but I was relieved to know that the call was recorded. I heard no more but if she had complained it would have been clear that my advice was reasonable. 

I remembered this case when I recently read that many of the Londoners who decided to escape to the country during the pandemic have now discovered that rural Devon and Cornwall are not the paradise that had anticipated. 

I hope their image of Devon is not based on the TV detective “Beyond Paradise”. Not only is it filmed in Looe in Cornwall but it assumes that most Devonians are a little simple. They also need to do more research into the Devon accent. I have yet to hear “Me lover” “Maid” or “where be you to?”. 

In 2021 over 100,000 Londoners moved out spending £48.8 billion in properties outside London. This number has now halved and people are moving back. 

Some people move to a beautiful part of rural Devon and wonder why they can’t get a Uber taxi or find a specialist coffee shop. There is no large supermarket just round the corner and the children have to travel to school by bus. Why isn’t there a nearby cinema and where can we go for concerts? Where is the motorway and nearby train station? Any teenagers might find clubbing difficult.

Most people outside the South West do not realise the distances involved. I was at a medical school reunion in London when I said that I was in Torbay. Someone commented, “you must see quite a lot of so and so as he is in Truro”. Eighty miles and nearly a two-hour drive is not just round the corner. My London colleagues are nearer to Southampton than we are to Truro and they have a motorway. 

I love the narrow Devon lanes but they are not popular with non-Devonians. The high hedges with the occasional rock sticking out of the bank present a challenge. 

One GP working for the out of hours service had moved down from Manchester. He complained to one of the drivers that one road was particularly narrow. 

“Was there grass growing down the middle?”

“No”

“So, it wasn’t narrow then was it”. 

My daughter in law who comes from the midlands hates driving on our narrow roads. When I was staying up there she was driving on a wide major road and commented “this is what we call a back road”. 

Many people who move here love it and appreciate the beauty of the area. They make friends, settle in and become important members of our community. But there are also advantages of living in a city. Before selling up and deciding to “escape to the county” people need to do some homework. I love living in Devon but there are pros and cons. As one of our sons commented “civilisation starts one hundred miles up the M5 in Bristol”.  No one should move here expecting the same services as in London anymore than I should move to London and ask where are the costal walks in the countryside?