A couple of days ago, we decided on a Dartmoor walk. We went, randomly, to Princetown, which is the town in the middle of Dartmoor with the monstrous prison. But it turned out that a very large number of the people of Devon had also gone to Princetown for a walk, and it was humming. Also, because Princetown is right in the middle, you can't just walk out in any direction onto the moor, you are corralled onto neatly-fenced footpaths. This was not what I had in mind, so we fled, and instead stopped randomly near Merrivale and headed for a convenient tor. This was a lot more pleasingly spacious.
It clouded over as we went up, and fingers of sun were reaching through the clouds to the South.
On top of Great Mis Tor, looking North, there is no sign of human beings apart from that little square box thing.
We went around the tor and headed back down.
Looking behind at Great Mis Tor with Little Mis Tor in front of it. The cloud came down again and I think it is raining again up there already, even though we were in golden sunlight.
I love the way the light creates layers of silhouettes. I think that we are looking over the valley of the River Walkham here, and one of these tors is King's Tor, but I wouldn't want to bet on it. I could have worked it out if I'd sat down with my compass and map, but everything was too damp to make sitting very inviting.
This one makes me laugh. Brythen hurrying to catch up with Pp. He finds Pp much more interesting than me because he doesn't dwardle with the camera.
Then in the evening we went and saw the Rogue One film. I found it a bit boggling at first, with so many characters introduced so quickly, and had the sense that there were references flying past that I was missing, but in the end I warmed to it. Not sure how I'd have felt if I had not been spoilered for the ending though, so was ready for it. I think I would probably have liked Jyn Erso better if her story had been a little more different from Rey's, although perhaps that's being a bit picky. I took a great liking to the pilot, Bodhi for some reason. I think because he seemed so baffled and unviolent and generally 'wtf is doing on' and yet was still determined to do the right thing.
Today I did some carving while watching The Last Dragonslayer. I didn't have high expectations of it, but it was really watchable with lots of good lines. I loved the idea of a fantasy Kingdom of Herefordshire with fantasy supermarkets and fantasy electricity. And dragons, of course. And the dragon ecology idea where dragons are part of the ecology and you can't just wall them off into a reserve was brilliant.
Happy New Year all! I hope all you lot who have had bad years will have much better ones next year and that the people who have had good years will have more of them. It would be great to have a year where the bad things are all for bad people for a change.