Shopping

If you love shopping, North Devon is the place to be. With a large range of shopping experiences in the area, whether you want indoor shopping centres, traditional high streets, antique emporiums or modern retail parks, you’re sure to find exactly what you’re looking for.

From small, independent retailers to big named brands and all manner of goods in-between, you can buy local home wear or high end designer gear. So, whether you’re a committed follower of fashion or someone that loves one-off crafts, our shops will produce the goods.

In this region, we are passionate about the quality of our local produce and this is reflected in the wide range of locally made crafts, gifts and food items.

Arts, Crafts and more

Being an arty lot, you’ll find plenty of shops and galleries selling all manner of art from paintings to photographs to hand made furniture – if you can think of it, you can find it!
If art is your thing, make sure to visit the village of Appledore where you can find galleries featuring local artists for sale or for antiques, the town of Bideford is full of shops with heirlooms for sale.

For the literary minded, Exmoor is full of quaint book stores, some of which specialise in out of print editions and antique books. Dulverton is a good place to head if you’re interested in finding classic collectables.

Historic shopping experiences

If you want to experience what a visit to the shops was like in yesteryear, North Devon has a number of incredible historic shopping areas, like the Pannier Markets where you can find regular, alternating markets and Barnstaple’s Butcher’s Row. Today, these markets have a wide variety of stalls, independent shops and boutiques offering a huge array of interesting gifts and produce.

Shop the best local products

Like the rest of the county, North Devon is full of fantastic local produce that has been harvested directly from the land and the sea. You can either wander around the many food festivals that are held in the region or head to one of the farm shops. Farm shops are hugely popular as many of them have onsite cafes and restaurants where you can sample the food grown on the farm and pick up some deli items at the same time.

Most of these shops are independently run, but you might find a few of them dotted around that are supplied by the same farm. If you want to make your shop as eco friendly as possible, these are a great place to start, not only can you reduce the item’s food miles, but often products are supplied in recyclable or reusable packaging and anywhere that cuts down on single use plastics is good by us!

For high street fashions, head to Barnstaple where you’ll find Green Lanes and their many familiar stores, while South Molton is the place to be for independent local stores and crafts.
Like we said, Bideford is great for antiques but it is also the home of Affinity Devon and Atlantic Village, where you can find the very best of high street and designer goods.