Ottery St Mary is a small market town in the Otter valley of east Devon, best known for two things: it is the birthplace of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and every 5 November it holds one of England's most extraordinary Guy Fawkes celebrations — the Tar Barrels, where locals hoist flaming barrels of tar onto their backs and run through the packed streets. It is as dangerous and exhilarating as it sounds.
The rest of the year, Ottery is a quiet and handsome place. The collegiate Church of St Mary is its centrepiece, a fourteenth-century church modelled on Exeter Cathedral, with a painted wooden ceiling and an astronomical clock that still works. The Tumbling Weir, a rare circular weir on the River Otter, is an unexpected Victorian engineering gem. Cadhay Manor, just outside town, is a Tudor manor house with a remarkable courtyard featuring portrait sculptures of Henry VIII and his three royal children. The town sits in gentle rolling farmland, and the Otter Valley is good walking and cycling country, with otters reintroduced and now resident on the river. Exeter is a short drive or bus ride west.