Back a little early from my first stint at Ways With Words set in glorious Devon countryside and all thanks to landing the room just a wall's width away from the shared toilet facilities.Either 20 plus people kept flushing me awake all night or one poor person had a problem.
Lack of sleep is not compatible with staying conscious in literary talks in warm, crowded rooms no matter how fascinating the speaker or the subject.
Never mind, here's a taster of my outward bound journey over high Dartmoor early on Sunday morning, in some typical, hair frizzing Dartmoor weather.
The view from Cox Tor looking down on Tavistock and across to Cornwall.
Not sure if taking photos of HMP's is legal so here's a "prison" on Dartmoor somewhere, never looks anything other than bleak and forbidding with the feeling that a Baskerville type hound may just leap out at you.You may wonder just how the Krays managed to spring the Mad Axeman, Frank Mitchell from here back in the swinging sixties and they probably wished they'd never bothered.In fact Frank was violent and uncontrollable even for the warders and it would seem he had an established right to roam around the prison farm and often used to drink in the local pub with a prison warder for company. In that case getting into the car sent to fetch him was quite straightforward.He went "missing" soon afterwards, murdered but no body ever found, and it can only be assumed he's supporting a motorway somewhere.
If you've read Helen Slavin's The Extra Large Medium this sign will make you smile, if you haven't you'll need to to get the joke.It is a lovely local beauty spot but, thanks to Helen, does give new meaning to any suggestion of "boulder holders"
Amazing how the sun can be shining on the other side of the moor.
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