By: Blonde Two

A week or so ago I told you that Blonde One and I were planning a trip up to Dartmoor to find some vermin traps.

Well we went and we found:

A snaking, bubbling river (lucky fish)

Lots of intriguing pillow mounds (poor bunnies)

A perfect picnic spot (lucky Blondes)

Two diverging paths (mysterious Dartmoor)

Fascinating boundaries (well done ancient woman)

An apple crusher (sorry apples but lucky farmers)

Some Dartmoor weather (well done God)

You may or may not have spotted a pattern here; yes that’s right, we found just about everything apart from those vermin traps.

How can this have happened? Well, you are not going to believe this but the Two Blondes, those bastions of modern planning, went on their expedition under-prepared.

  • We obtained grid references (thanks Colin)
  • We plotted a route on OS Maps (thanks Ordnance Survey)
  • We used our maps and compasses (well done us)
  • We used OS Locate (thanks again Ordnance Survey)
  • We did careful looking-type activities (well done us again)

What we hadn’t done, and with hindsight this appears to have been a fundamental error, was to find out what vermin traps actually looked like. On a moor that is covered with clitter (random stone scattering – thanks glacial, ice-age thing) it is easy to find stones that form vermin trap type shapes (most of them did) but finding ones that we could confidently say were that which we were seeking proved to be beyond our Blonde abilities.

Having said all that, we had a most marvellous day and are looking forward to exploring the Gutter Tor area again very soon.

Thanks Colin!