Langtree is the kind of small, getting-on-with-its-own-business kind of North Devon village that's only worth writing about if your relatives have emigrated there.

About 500 people bustle slowly around its cottages and farms, burring at each other in a soft Devon accent and commenting on how the church fete was a 'proper job', as they would say. Its pub is a place to go on a quiet summer afternoon when you have nothing else to do; its 13th-century church is alive with the sound of flower-arranging; and one local farmer will charm you with the scent of chicken-based manure on a Sunday.

In the nearby village of Stibb Cross, major development is planned; but it probably won't affect Langtree, which ambles along in its own pace, life being enlivened only occasionally by talk of a new village school or the sad death of a cat under the wheels of a passing psychotic lorry driver.