[Is Northampton that alien to Devon?]
Dunno what you mean. It's a bitch of a drive (took my daughter 8 hours yesterday just to get back to London). Public transport would need about seven hours to get there. A middle-of-nowhere kind of place. Like here, but fewer grockles with caravans.
I had a house in Olney in the mid eighties; Northampton wasn't far. It used to be a major centre for boot & shoe making, but that moved abroad a long time ago. Does that make it alien? It might make a suitable backdrop for filming some of CP Snow's books, but apart from that . . . I give up. What's the alien thing about? Lots of immigrants? So what?