Eventually, in 1988 the planning process over-ruled some protesters who had been holding things up and a by-pass was built.
Today, Okehampton is once again a charming, small, quiet market town to the north of Dartmoor. The famous traffic lights no longer do their worst. Giant articulated lorries no longer thunder past, belching fumes on the residents of the town who can now move about with ease.
The little castle, complete with its ghostly coach driven by a headless driver, sits tranquil alongside the river Oke. Its banks covered with bluebells in May.
Our date is a Tuesday in March at around 6:30.
Just after dawn a saloon car is parked close to those traffic lights in one of the bays which are typical of small, economically struggling towns who realise that providing free parking is more likely to grow business than charging extortionate amounts for municipal car parks. 'Parking limited to one hour. No return within two hours', says a sign.
On the back seat of the car lies the prone figure of a man, half-covered by an anorak, possibly asleep, possible in a coma, possibly dead. He is alone.
He lies there as the hours tick by, very much more quietly than the lorries of old: 7:30, 8:30, 9:30 ... onwards until midday, the sun high in a blue sky.
In a tele-visual world our boys in blue would never have let this happen. PC George Dixon would have spotted the body on one of his many rounds and would have had some simple homily about neighbourliness. Morse and Lewis would have been in there like a shot, uncovering some intra-collegiate rivalry with the body being that of the Master's good for nothing brother-in-law, down on his luck.
Vera would have muttered 'Pet' at every interviewee, while discovering a tragic tale of deprivation and local corruption emanating from a historic building deal in the North East.
There would have been no stopping Silent Witness whose Nicky Alexander would have given her trademark 'worried look' as she examined the stash of (prescription) drugs in the boot of the car. Line of Duty's AC12 would have arrived all sirens blazing, SWAT teams at the ready.
But we don't live in a tele-visual world. Not in Okehampton. We live in a real world where there are no longer PC George Dixons on the beat tapping on the windows of cars to check on prone bodies: to see if they are asleep, have had a medical emergency or have had died in situ. There are no traffic wardens to monitor free parking spaces: there is no money in it. First responders may be close by but ambulances are probably more than five hours away.
Unlike what might happen in some inner cities, during that long period, no one opens the door, grabs the waiting shoulder bag and runs off with its money and credit cards. No one even tries the door.
And that is perhaps the biggest surprise. During those long five and half hours in broad daylight, in the centre of a town with shoppers passing and re-passing, no one makes any attempt to see if the man in the car needs help. Just one small boy does a double take when he looks through the window and then moves on.
Okehampton is a quiet town and even its Good Samaritans are getting on with their lives.
The man sleeps on, undisturbed by the ghostly rumbles of the articulated lorries of old. The Oke continued to flow quietly towards the sea.
How did he come to be there? Ah, that is another story.
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Dilemma: it is 4:15 am. You are driving across Bodmin Moor on your way to Bristol where your passenger requires urgent medical attention. You are on schedule for the 7:00 arrival when you suddenly realise you can no longer drive safely. You pull in to a lay by (yet another on this route which will be awarded a notional blue plaque commemorating some event), and collapse on the steering wheel. 10 miles ahead is Launceston; 30 miles ahead is Okehampton. What to do?
Discovery: Okehampton is the only place that has helpful taxi drivers prepared to be roused from their beds at 6:00. You do not have 24/7 taxi services in the country.
Coda: the passenger survived and is doing well.
