The town with its own currency

Here's the Totnes fact that sums the place up nicely. It's one of England's oldest chartered towns, and for years it issued its own local currency, the Totnes Pound, designed specifically to keep money circulating among independent local businesses rather than draining straight out to national chains.

It's a fittingly stubborn gesture for a town with a long-standing reputation as a haven for alternative culture, the kind of place where that idea wasn't a gimmick so much as a genuine extension of how people already thought. The narrow stone-paved lanes through the centre have barely changed shape in centuries, lined with independent shops and cafés that the currency was designed to protect in the first place.

I painted Totnes in watercolour and ink, that narrow stone high street. There's a poster with a letter home and a postcard if you'd like one.

Shop the poster here: Totnes, Devon · Travel Poster