Drone survey in South Molton

The town sits on rising ground between the Mole and the Bray, surrounded by livestock farmland, and the parishes around it are full of farmhouses, barn conversions and working agricultural buildings.

Livestock buildings have their own conditions. They are humid inside, which is hard on the underside of a metal roof, they are in constant use so cannot easily be emptied for access, and they are usually on open ground where wind loading is sustained rather than gusty. All three point towards inspecting them from above.

High rainfall and long wetting periods are the norm here because of Exmoor, and exposed farm buildings on open ground take that weather without any shelter at all.

On the domestic stock the effect is the familiar one: growth on shaded slate, softening mortar and slow decay rather than sudden failure. On the farm buildings it is corrosion, loosened fixings and gutters that have long since stopped working.

The square, the Guildhall and the Pannier Market give the town a consistent Georgian character, with terraced cottages around them and modern estates to the east. Natural slate and clay plain tile dominate.

Those are conventional survey subjects, and the useful thing about a consistent centre is that one building's findings often apply to its neighbours, in the same way as at Honiton.

For a farm the sensible unit is the holding rather than the shed. Flying a yard of six or eight buildings in one visit produces a comparable record of each and answers the real question, which is what to spend money on first.

Travel is inside the fixed price, so a rural address between here and Exmoor prices the same way as one in the square.

South Molton is the last proper town before the moor on this approach, and the weather changes noticeably in the few miles north towards Exmoor. A job at the Quince Honey Farm end of the parish and a job on the high ground beyond it can be different propositions on the same morning.

For anybody booking, that is worth knowing rather than worrying about. A rural EX36 address on rising ground is more likely to need a second attempt than one in the square, and building that expectation into the arrangement avoids a wasted afternoon for everybody.

The rivers Mole and Bray, and the lanes between them, also mean that a good many properties here are reached by a single track with no room to turn a large vehicle. That is a real constraint on conventional access equipment and no constraint at all on an aircraft that arrives in the back of a car.