Totnes drone survey, Devon

The road out to Totnes runs by the A38, coming off at the Dartington turn, covering the roughly 20.9 miles from our Exeter base. It's a regular stretch of road for us, so a booking here sits alongside the rest of the work we do across South Hams.

Whether the address is Totnes or somewhere else in South Hams, TQ9 included, the same fixed price agreed before the visit applies, mileage already built into that one figure.

If a Totnes flight needs pushing back, it costs a phone call rather than a day's driving either way, since TQ9 sits well inside the working area for South Hams.

For Totnes, being further along Devon changes nothing about the registrations carried: CAA operator status, checked in TQ9 the same way as an Operator ID and Flyer ID would be anywhere else on the South Hams round.

Around Totnes, TQ9 included: A dense medieval and Elizabethan core with slate-hung and jettied frontages, Georgian and Victorian streets, and modern estates on the outskirts at Bridgetown and Follaton. It's the kind of spread that means the brief changes street to street across South Hams.

The ground itself, around Totnes: A hill town at the tidal limit of the Dart, with a very steep main street running from the river up to the castle and rolling South Hams farmland all around. That shapes where the drone can launch from in TQ9 as much as anything else, sorted before the surveyor turns up rather than worked out on the day. Totnes Castle is the kind of local landmark that makes a TQ9 address in Totnes easy to picture, not far from The Butterwalk.

Older buildings around Totnes are usually a roof condition job first, with leak tracing brought in separately if there's already water coming through somewhere in TQ9 and nobody has found where yet.

On our own books Totnes is filed under South Hams, one of the groupings used across Devon to plan a working week around TQ9 rather than treat every booking as a one-off trip.

Because Totnes sits inside TQ9, it's grouped with the rest of South Hams, which usually means Dartmouth, Newton Abbot and Paignton get covered on the same run out from Exeter rather than a separate visit.

Totnes enquiries work the same way as any TQ9 booking: postcode, job, and a few dates that would suit. We check South Hams availability and come back rather than guess at a timescale.

Once the Totnes flying is done, the report follows within 48 hours, whether the job was in TQ9 or anywhere else on the South Hams round. Same written report, wherever it was flown.

The same run usually takes in Kingsbridge and Ivybridge as well, and closer to Totnes itself, River Dart and Dartington Hall estate are the kind of landmarks that make an address easy to place before we've even driven out.