Challacombe is a small rural parish within the Exmoor National Park. Although only a few miles from the north coast, it is the highest parish in North Devon and the source of the rivers Bray and Barle. The scattered farmsteads surround two small hamlets: Barton Town, the original Saxon village, which was partly abandoned in the C19th; and Challacombe (or Challacombe Town) which is more sheltered and nearer the main route from Barnstaple to Simonsbath.  About half of the houses in the parish, including the holiday cottages at Town Tenement Farm, are in the sheltered valley near the river Bray, where there is a charming ford and an ancient packhorse bridge. There is a lovely walk through a beech forest to the old church, beside which are the remains of the original village. There are many excellent walks and open access areas on the hills all around. You can visit spectacular Shoulsbury Castle, a huge ancient earthwork named after the devil and said to have been defended by King Alfred the Great; Pinkery Pond, thought to have been dug to feed a canal that was never built; or the charming Challacombe reservoir, beyond which is the Domesday manor of Radworthy, abandoned after the great flood of 1952. Travel even further back in time by visiting one of the many Bronze Age barrows or Neolithic stone monuments on the tops of the moor