By: Blonde Two
Six-Foot-Blonde came to stay for a week or so earlier this month. He is a chap of many outdoor gadgets and gismos, so we had a great time having a play with them.
One of his current favourites (along with the lighting-up-frisbee) was his kite. Kites obviously give a mum a great excuse to take her children up to Dartmoor so that is what I did (two of them anyway). After a lovely lunch at The Rugglestone Inn, we spent a happy couple of hours kiting. Six-Foot-Blonde gave his sister Not-at-all-Blonde some lessons (turned out she didn’t need many), she tried very hard to knock him out with the kites, and I took pictures with a posh camera (another of Six-Foot’s new gadgets), drank tea out of a flask, and shouted excellent advice. It was a lot like when they were little, except that they were using a flying implement to hit each other with!
Dartmoor is a perfect venue for kite flying, and the suggestion usually gets a better family response than, “Let’s go and walk through a bog for three hours in the rain.” Perfect because, there is plenty of space, and because it is almost always windy.
Unless, that is, you happen to be attempting your second Dartmoor kiting trip of the week and you trustingly guide your party towards a disappointingly flat Wind Tor. Then, of course, there is not even a murmur of air stirring and you have to resort to light-up-frisbee throwing.
If you harnessed yourself to a dozen or so kites, could you explore Dartmoor without getting your feet wet? And if it was night time, perhaps the frisbee would light your way like a meteor. Though it might be a bit startling for low-flying bats to find a bird that big flying at night when they popped out of any available belfry to go hunting.