By: Blonde Two
We were congratulated yesterday on our ability to find links to hang our blog posts onto. Well, I have to say that I am particularly pleased with this one as it links two things that I really enjoy. This evening, households all around the UK will be sitting on their sofas (or behind them) with their eyes riveted to the screen, watching the 50th anniversary episode of Doctor Who. Now I really am not a big TV fan, I find myself watching less and less as the years go by (half the time I don’t even know what is going on in the world because I don’t watch the news). There is one thing that the family Blonde Two loves the opportunity to do together though and that is a bit of time travel adventure via the good old Doctor. Like many of us, I remember family Saturday evenings as a child, hiding behind cushions and going to bed with the door open just that little chink more than usual.
You will be pleased and perhaps not at all surprised to learn that at least one episode of Doctor Who has been filmed on Dartmoor. As you can imagine, it was not a Dalek one. Can you imagine those particular bad boys picking their way through all of the clitter (loose rocks lying in a disorganised manner). I have a lovely image in my head of one of them stuck upside down in one of the tin mine shafts up near Eylesbarrow. As I type, Doctor Who is becoming confused in my head with Sherlock Holmes who wasn’t a Time Lord but has stood the test of time just as well.
Tom Baker and I have something in common (for it was he who starred in the Dartmoor episode). It is nothing to do with scarves although I did have a friend at school whose Gran knitted him a full-length Baker style Doctor Who scarf which he insisted on wearing all year round (I am sure he will be watching tonight). No, we have both broken a bone on Dartmoor. Poor old Tom broke his collar bone as he was wrestling with Sontarans (if you don’t know your Doctor Who monsters, think short, round aliens with green faces in silver padded suits).
If you like Dartmoor location spotting challenges (and I know some of you are experts at this) watch a bit of the episode (more tor shots in episode two) and see if you can do better than I did. There is a mine shaft, some girts and a tor (I have an idea about the tor) – have fun! Tom Baker obviously liked Dartmoor when he was up there because at one point during the episode, he is seen on his knees sniffing the ground. I love the smell of peat but I have never taken it that far (peat is not the only thing on the floor up there).
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xsgcv8_the-sontaran-experiment-part1_shortfilms
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xsgu0q_the-sontaran-experiment-part2_shortfilms
I have never been a fan, but I enjoyed your post. Bravo.
I just read your extreme geocaching post and wanted to comment but couldn’t see where. In my head it is such a gentle, child friendly pursuit, how great that someone has made it more exciting!
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Errrr…this might be me being a bit blonde…so please don’t laugh…one for the geographers perhaps……but is clitter another term for solifluction or are they different processes??
Hmm, had to look that one up. I know that there has been a fairly recent turn around in opinion about whether or not the ice-age reached Dartmoor. The discussions I read (those I understood) suggested that patterns of clitter (loose scattered rocks) suggested that it had in places.
Ow my brain hurts …