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| It's in the Edited Guide sonny! |
Okehampton - The Town with Moor1
The market town of Okehampton sits right in the middle of Devon, England, at the top edge of Dartmoor.
It's perfectly placed for...well, for being ignored totally by visitors
to the north and south Devon coastlines or being bypassed totally by tourists on their way to Cornwall.
Getting there
Head
for the south-west of England, down the M5. As you fall off the end of
the M5 just past Exeter, you have two choices: down to south Devon on
the A38, or across the top of Dartmoor towards Cornwall on the A30. So,
hang a left onto the A30 dual carriageway. As you round the first bend,
you'll find yourself driving
into true Devon landscape - proper rolling hills. Not flat(ish) like
Somerset, not manicured like Dorset, not harsh like Cornwall. This is
definitely Devon.
Okehampton (or Oke as the locals call it -
pronounced Oak-ee) will be coming up in just over 20 miles (30km).
You'll know when you are almost there because three things will happen:
- First, you'll get a sense of something a bit bigger - a bit more vast - happening over to the south. There it is, a glimpse, in the distance, then gone, hidden again behind one of those ubiquitous Devon hills. Then, yes, there it is again, bigger this time. That'll be Dartmoor, looming large immediately on your left.
- Next, you'll get caught out by a steep bit of hill, where the inside lane of the dual carriageway is always occupied by a tractor pulling a trailer of hay bales followed by a Land Rover pulling a horsebox.
- Finally, you'll see the Okehampton B3260 turn off.
Years back, Oke was known as the bottleneck - the place where the summer holiday trip down to Cornwall turned into a traffic jam. There is a pub a couple of miles further on from here at Sourton Down called The Bottle Neck, just to remind us. Legend has it that a frazzled motorist from London once ground to a halt in an Oke car park, kids in the back asking 'Are we there yet?',
and found himself being approached by a born and bred Devon local, who
strolled up to his quarter-light, bent down real slow, and said 'Take it easy...you be in the slow country now'. So, get into the spirit of things, pull in behind that horsebox, and follow it up the road into Oke.
Trade and Tourism
On
your way down the hill into Okehampton is the Exeter Road industrial
estate, where some of the town's larger businesses are based: transport
and haulage companies, a milk distribution business, a bee-keeping
equipment supplier. Nothing unusual. However, the view from the top of
the steps beside the cardboard recycling skip in the municipal dump must
surely be unrivalled across the country; there's the edge of Dartmoor
again - you don't see that every day (unless you regularly dispose of
your household waste in Okehampton).
Also on the way into Oke is a
big farm and country supplies shop where you can purchase washing-up
liquid in the next aisle down from the spot-welding equipment - the
rural farming community served by Okehampton are clearly a resourceful
bunch.
One of the main sources of employment in Oke is tourism. As
you follow the road down into Okehampton town proper, on the face of
it, this could be any other town. The 'outdoor' and walking equipment
shops and the abundance of tea
shops are a dead giveaway though. Having said that, unlike some other
tourism hotspots, Oke doesn't get too overrun by visitors during the
summer, particularly when you consider the increase in cars and caravans
just up the road on the A30.
Take a quick look around Oke to see
everything you might expect on your average town high street: bus stops,
chemists, churches, dentist, estate agents, hospital, job centre,
laundrette, library, medical centres, playgroups, police station, pubs,
schools, shops, supermarkets, taxi rank, town council offices, town hall
and vet surgery.
Market and Museum
Once
in the centre of Okehampton, turn right at the main crossroad to find
the Charter Hall and Market Hall. The pannier market is open from
Wednesday to Saturday, with trade steadily building up towards the end
of the week with the addition of a number of extra stalls. On one
Saturday each month the regular market traders get kicked out of the
Market Hall to make way for the farmer's market, (much to the irritation
of the usual traders - to the extent that there have been heated
exchanges on a Saturday morning outside in the Red Lion Yard).
Back
across the central crossroad are the museum and the tourist information
centre. The museum's name reveals Okehampton's strong links with the
moor: The Museum of Dartmoor Life. The museum building - a
disused granary built in the 1800s - was purchased by funds raised by
local volunteers in 1982 and has been improved over the years to
award-winning status. The cobbled courtyard features rails on which the
carts would run to the old mill buildings across the road. A water-wheel also still stands, situated within a row of houses now.
Castle and Common
Staying on this side of the high street, signs can be followed for a short walk up a side road to Okehampton Castle.
Just when you think you must have gone the wrong way, there it stands
in front of you. It was built during the Norman conquest in 1070 and was
acquired around 100 years later (along with the entire borough of
Okehampton) by the Courtenay family, by marriage. Over the next 400
years, various Courtenays either rebuilt the castle or let it fall into
disrepair, the cycle ending in ruin when Henry Courtenay (the then
Marquis of Exeter) was executed for treason and the castle abandoned.
Climb to the castle keep on top of the motte2
and - once again - you can see the edge of Dartmoor. As this is now an
English Heritage site, there is an entrance fee. However, pick the right
day and you may well be party to an outdoor Shakespeare performance, medieval games afternoon or bird of prey presentation.
Back
down towards the town centre, and on about 50 yards (45 metres) is the
entrance to Simmons Park. The park gets its name from Sydney Simmons, a
local man who made his fortune in America and who, in 1906, paid off
Okehampton Council's mortgage on this commons site and transformed it
into a park. Since then the park has been improved with the addition of a
bowling green, tennis courts, pavilion and putting green. You can follow a footpath out of the park which leads - you guessed it - onto Dartmoor.
More and...Moor
An un-signposted road out of the back of Oke leads to the best bit of Dartmoor3.
The town planning department has cleverly sited a dead-end road sign
just before things get interesting, apparently in the hope of deterring a
handful of visitors. Stick with it though: up the hill, round a sharp
bend, across the bridge over the A30 and up a bit more hill. Ahead is a
cattle grid, beside which a plaque attached to a lump of rock
begrudgingly admits that this is Dartmoor National Park. Keep on up the
hill. The grass has that 'never mowed but kept down by sheep
and ponies' look. Follow the road round to the right, still going up.
The trees have that 'hunched away from the southwesterly wind' look.
Keep on going on and up and over. The lumps of rock have that 'been here
since the stone ages' look. Turn left towards the next cattle grid ... stop ... look ... breathe in. That's the moor. And that's just the edge of the moor. Explore.
1 Tourist Information signs on the way into town.
2 Giant Norman mound of earth.
3 In this Researcher's opinion (in fact, this Researcher hesitates to give details here, as once everyone knows, they'll all want to come...).
