Short answer: The Meadows is the answer — a free riverside park with a zip wire, a playground and a BMX pump track, with two cafés on site and the town a short walk away. When it rains, the pannier market is covered, Victorian and open Tuesday to Saturday.
A large free park between the River Tavy and the Tavistock Canal, with a playground, a zip wire and a pump track, and two cafés on site so you are never far from a coffee or a toilet. It is flat, it is enclosed by the river on one side, and it costs nothing. With a toddler that combination is rarer than it should be.
The walk into town from it is short and level, which means you can do the park first, let them run, and then go and do the thing you wanted to do with a child who has already burned something off.
The pannier market is a covered Victorian hall in the middle of town, open Tuesday to Saturday, 9am to 4pm, with a café on site. It is properly indoors rather than stalls under an awning, there is room to push a buggy between the stalls, and a different market runs each day — Friday is the Charter Market with the produce.
Buckland Abbey is twenty minutes south, with gardens and woodland walks and partial wheelchair access, which usually translates to buggy-friendly in the main areas. Lydford Gorge is the famous one nearby and the honest advice is to leave it: it is steep and rocky with sheer drops, and it is not a buggy walk.
Bellever Forest is the gentlest Dartmoor option with young children — river swimming in summer, wild ponies, £5 all-day parking and trees for shelter. Open moor with a toddler is ambitious; the weather changes fast and there is nothing to get behind when it does.
Granito Lounge does food until 10pm and is dog friendly, though the music is loud. The two cafés at the Meadows are the simplest option if the park is already the plan — and you do not have to get anyone back into a car seat to reach them.
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