…don’t mind if I do!

There was a strange quirk of fate today that meant that our trip to buy wainscoting was (initially) fruitless so we had to go and get some from a different place, some 70 miles or so from home, including a drive up the road that skirts the western fringe of Dartmoor. This fact has another indisputable truth embedded in it – that road is the road on which the Dartmoor Inn stands. So, it’d be rude not to, wouldn’t it?

Three summers ago, I spent a couple of weeks on my hands and knees on the moor about 3-400 yards from the Dartmoor Inn monitoring a super rare, endemic species of plant that only grows in a handful of places and this is one. I can’t believe it was three whole years ago that I was there gathering data for my dissertation. It must be at least five years since a lovely evening in the Dartmoor Inn with Colin and his sister Susan while they were on holiday there. Memories, memories – they just won’t sleep.

Our trip ended up fruitful in as much as we got the special beaded wainscoting board that DM had specified as “essential” to the aesthetics of the job. It meant we went on a 150ish mile round trip instead of the 40 miles that we’d been anticipating BUT we got what we needed and it was a really special thing to get to spent all that time sitting next to DM, chatting and singing along to fabulous soul music. We start work in earnest tomorrow doing preparation and getting ready for the big push at Easter.