Short answer: The House of Marbles is free, open seven days a week, and has interactive marble runs that hold a small child longer than anything else in the area. Ullacombe Farm lets you feed the goats for £1 and has indoor and outdoor play areas. Both beat taking a toddler onto open moor.
Free entry, open seven days a week all year, in the old pottery on Pottery Road. There are bespoke interactive marble runs, museums of games, glass, pottery and marbles, and a working glassworks where you can watch glass being blown. For a toddler the marble runs alone justify the trip, and it costs nothing to walk in.
There is a licensed restaurant and café on site, which means the whole wet morning can happen in one building.
Feed the goats for £1, play areas both indoors and out, and an on-site butcher if you want to take something home. The indoor play area is the part that matters on the edge of Dartmoor, where the weather makes its own decisions.
With a toddler, do not head for the high moor. East Dartmoor National Nature Reserve is free, has four car parks so you can build a short loop to suit small legs, and has a riverside bird hide. Trees mean shelter, and shelter is what open moor does not have.
Home Farm Café in the Parke estate is strong on vegan and gluten-free and has picnic tables outside. 3 Sixty has sofas and magazines upstairs and bike storage inside, but does not serve lunch before 12.15, which is worth knowing if you are working to a nap.
Bovey Tracey has two free indoor attractions, which is unusual for a town this size: the House of Marbles and MAKE Southwest at Riverside Mill on Fore Street, the former Devon Guild of Craftsmen. Both are free and both are dry.
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