The main town is Barnstaple - busy, thriving, not too big. The Tarka Trail cycleway (bikes for hire) follows, very attractively, the River Torridge from deep inland to the sea and on past Instow's good beach and lovely cricket ground to Barnstaple. From Hartland Point's lighthouse, great views to Lundy Island - and from Ilfracombe ships (day trips) to it. In Appledore unusual ships are built and its heart is very pretty. Elizabethan merchantmen sailed from Bideford. Inland, woods and fields roll, sometimes steeply, with streams, rivers and farms, almost totally unspoilt - as is most of the coast. Its north-west, stretching from Hatherleigh to Hartland, is Devon's least changed, least visited, least inhabited part, a country of big fields, some forests, gently undulating, with long, long views beneath big skies where old men in their vegetable gardens look up as a car passes. Holsworthy is the main (very small) town, with square, market, firm purpose. The River Tamar rises in the Tamar Lakes (water sports, fishing). The roads are straighter and less high-hedged than most in Devon - and emptier.