By: Blonde Two
If you remember, last week Blonde One and I went for our first night navigation practice since the Night-Nav-Off competition last February.
Night navigation is a peculiar thing to choose to do, and nobody hopes for an unplanned session. On Dartmoor though, it isn’t just the dark that can bring these skills into play, the mist can render navigating by sight just as impossible and it can do it very, very suddenly.
Our Blonde night navigation sessions have always been an odd mixture of competence and giggling. This is quite often because of the terrain over which we end up walking. Dartmoor, although some would tell you otherwise, does have a few paths. The chances, in the dark, of ending up on one of these when you are following a bearing from a lump of rock to a stone cross are minimal. For the Blondes, this means that almost all of our night nav sessions result in us struggling through patches of gorse. I would like to add here that, even through gorse, we appear to be able to walk in a straight line.
It takes the toughest of trousers to stop gorse from scratching and woe betide you if you fall over the tangled mess of branches (no gorse bush ever grows in a straight line). I have had a gorse prickle in my finger for over a year now. I know exactly when it entered and am presuming that one day, like Two Blondes in a gorse patch, it is going to find its way out.
I have lightened your picture a bit. It looks as though you may be on the point of making a fortune marketing the Blonde Ear Torch (sold in pairs).
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ws105jfgqkhkkza/BlondeDark.jpg?dl=0
You have sparked off a gorse story memory, and if I can illustrate it properly it will provide fodder for a post on my blog. Thanks.
“Do not go gentle into that good night”.
you appear to have revealed a pole-assisted fugitive lurking behind the ‘menhir’ – or, less menacinglyly perhaps, seeing that gorse is always in bloom, they/it was waiting to capture a midnight snog.
Midnight snogging? On a Blonde Bimble? Whatever next!
Dropbox appears to have picked up all pics relating to Blondes and some others in a 22 slide file – well, there is nothing there that I wouldn’t have wanted in the public domain so let it be.