A camera, computer and a compulsion.

Salmo Trutta

“One angler weighed up the pros and cons of fishing for rainbow or brown trout: ‘The choice between the rainbow – often easier to hook and harder to land, and the brown – always harder to hook and sometimes easier to land, is a matter of taste and style, and there are no rights and wrongs in the matter.’”

- R. M. McDowall, The Reed field guide to New Zealand freshwater fishes. Auckland: Reed, 2000, p. 256.

I am not much of an angler, yet I am a man. And once a boy. A boy who grew up hooking eels from the lake, grabbing carp from flooded grass, bucketing spotties on a wharf and weighing anchor after anchor in the firth. So there’s a life of angling, despite never having fallen for the trap myself.

Still, I tend to carry a travel rod with me. Four piece blank, tiny guides and a simple reel spooled in gossamer braid; it makes tying knots fun. It’s a setup able to swing a softbait, tow a wobbler behind a rowed dinghy, or flick a veltic along the river bank. I carry it with me on trips, because I love the sport.

Rowing quietly over some cover and letting a softbait swim just above the kelp and then hooking a heavy snapper, the kind that makes your leader knot ping across the guides, is a perfect day. Too, standing thigh deep in a braided river casting for running salmon… despite the only bites being the sandflies.

Today I loaded a backpack with thick jam sandwiches of doughy bread, chocolate smattered Anzac biscuits, a yeti full of tea, tackle, reel and rod. Laura, ever willing, and Mlles. F & M rugged up against 13°c, a cruel wind and spits of rain strolled an urban adventure for three-quarters of an hour, never more than a hundred yards from a road, but though paddocks, behind houses and along the river, until a picnic and cast spot.

While the girls munched and supped, I tied a Veltic #3 in rainbow trout colour, and started casting. The river was high and strong, with a swirling eddy just down the bank from me. I kept trying my luck and testing my courage, letting the eddy tow the lure hard to the bank and then jigging past some cover, which I supposed would hide a trout finning and waiting for some food.

I paused my angling for a sandwich and tea, explored the bank with the girls and decided to try again. Mlle. M was onto her own last morcel and warned me I had about three more casts [before her patience waned]. I flicked out line again and let the lure wash as close to a willow in the water as I dare, jigged and snagged heavily. Deflated I wound a few times and pulled, in case I had merely grabbed a twig, the snag moved slowly with me …and then flicked. The tip of the rod doubled and line sliced through the water! A fish! “Girls, come here I’ve got a fish on” I called surprising myself.

I landed, unhooked, and presented the trout for quick pats, before letting it back into the water, always glad and hopeful when a fish swims away. Chuffed too that my decision of where I would be if I was a trout was validated!

Home beside the fire tonight I mulled over the fight. A heavy dead weight, a few pulls of line on swims, but for a nice sized fish not much of a scrap. I was glad to find the McDowall passage at the top of this post. Glad that a wiser head and more wizened an angler than I summed it up. I’ll take the passage one further, winter moocher snapper, brilliant kahawai jumping on a tight line in the bay, rainbow trout from the sand bank searing across the shallows or a heavy brown against the bank. My taste and style is the adventure and the story, no rights or wrongs in the matter.

After reading Robert MacFarlane’s The Wild Places, and then desperately trying to find away to email him… I found a tweet of his, asking for crowd sourced submissions against a potential loss of rights to camp on Dartmoor. It got me thinking, and I unearthed a 2010 trip report of Dartmoor South to North!  Context, I was a New Zealander living in the UK at the time.

Saturday 1400 - Ivybridge to Eylesbarrow Tin Mine 
I had caught the train down from Basingstoke, through Reading to Exeter.  The train was delayed and I was going to miss my connection at Plymouth for Ivybridge, so I changed at Exeter for commuter line and made it down to my starting point; Ivybridge Railway Station by about 2pm. 

Figure 1. Certainly a train station enroute Basingstoke - Ivybridge.

Things did not get off to an entirely auspicious start.  I am usually a bit excitable at the beginning of a trip.  This was most obvious as I crossed the platform flyover three times in search for the exit to the road.  I found my way and headed west towards the Two Moors Way starting point.  I would be following the Two Moors Way for the first couple of hours, and it headed up onto the Moor from the road through a bridleway.  Finding the bridleway, and then having opportunity to consult my map, was a delight.  I instantly fell in love with 1:25,000 scale maps. 

Let me talk about 1:25,000 scale Ordnance Survey Explorer maps.  They are beautiful.  They are accurate.  They are a delight.  They have 10 meter contour lines.  They show you a tiny 100 meter dogleg in a bridleway as four whole glorious millimeters.  I love 25,000 scale maps.  There is so much detail on them.  I’m sitting here regarding my torn, stained, worn map.  My gaze is drawn to one grid square and contained within it is: 

• 3 cairns
• 2 blowing house remains
• 2 non-roman settlements
• 3 tors
• Steps
• 1 river
• 1 brook
• 1 enclosure
• 1 combe
• Some tussocky shrub
• Exposed stone
• 60 meters change in elevation.

I walked up the bridleway, a short little climb to warm up the legs, had a chat to a friendly old man with an unfriendly spaniel and acknowledged his warning about the fog.  The fog was closing in, it was high cloud half an hour ago, now it was definitely foggy mist.  I walked up off the bridleway and onto the Moor proper.  I was instantly reminded of that hard, wet and windy west bloc of the North Island on New Zealand, proper sheep and beef country.  Just substitute the Limestone for Granite.  I waved a cheery “hullo” at some Lycra and plastic clad campers and walked on.  The path was a dismantled tramway and now stone and dirt road you could drive an urban warrior 4x4 over.  Visibility was dropping and it was starting to get a bit chillier so I put on my beanie.  I had about 15 kilometers to cover before I wanted to set up camp, so I carried on, conscious it was nearly 3pm already. 

I enjoyed walking the well worn path.  The closing mist added to my sense of privacy and aloneness, something I had been craving for a while since moving to a country with 254 people per square kilometer, as opposed of my native land’s 41.  Belted Galloway Cattle loomed and appeared in the mist and regarded me with a disinterested but astute gaze while they chewed their cud.  The evidence of tin mining and industry on Dartmoor was a strange juxtaposition against the bank and bleak expanse, a grated drain system appeared alongside the path, a broken viaduct spewing foaming peat water was almost surreal and hard to make out in the mist.  Square outlined ruins with low broken down walls provided shelter from the rising wind for a snack and a drink.

Figure 2. Afternoon tea, a lovely spot.

I broke away from the Two Moors Way and veered NE directly west Buckfastleigh, I wanted to stay on the Moor away from creature comforts for the night.  I bore NW on the Abbots Way, unsure of exactly where I was headed, but looking for a place to pitch camp in that general direction.  The weather was getting worse, it wasn’t totally awful, or utterly abysmal, but just constantly wet and shapes in the mist ghosting in front of me looked like they’d be doing at least 65 km/h if they were cars at a crossing.  I followed the well worn path, with freshly turned hoof marks down the hill towards a ford.  It is at this point things got a little trying as I became: At-odds-with-my-intended-location.  As the path approached the river it became scattered and spread, so I chose the easiest crossing point and hoped to pick up the path on the other side.  A well intentioned plan, which did not go so well.  I couldn’t find the path, so instead took a bearing from the track I was supposed to be on against where I thought I was and hoped to cross the track at some point. 

I erred about half a kilometer east of where I should’ve been.  It was tough going.  Boggy, wet, marshy, mired, wet and increasingly worried that it was getting late.  I found my way to a prominent cairn and took stock.  In a fit of worry induced lunacy I spent 20 minutes trying to pitch my fly in the lee of the cairn.  What was I thinking?  It was the highest point between the rest of the Moor and the direction the wind was coming from.  In the wind-shadow of a pile of rocks?  Mental.  I packed back up, it was nearly 8pm and I was going to go west and importantly - down - until I found shelter, or civilization.  I fancied a night on the floor of a manger.

I was really moving now, in a hurry and when I picked up a very obvious path heading west I was ecstatic to find it.  Moments later I was delighted to find the ruins of Eylesbarrow Tin Mine.  Low stone walls and grass.  No peaty bog.  Shelter from the now howling wind and a grass floor which was not a peaty bog, or mire.  Thoughts of wrapping myself in my groundsheet against some gorse or in a dryish bull wallow evaporated as I stalked the perimeter of the stone walls and found one which provided a perfect opportunity to pitch my fly as a lean-to.  Those walls were probably erected in the early 1800s.  60 men worked here, cutting underground workings into the granite to extract tin.  I mused on their lives as I set up my fly.  5 guy ropes and 10 pegs later it was 9pm and I was in my sleeping bag, exhausted not so physically, but just glad to be in bed.  I ate croissants and jam for dinner and fell soundly asleep. 

I woke at 4am and had an opportunity to remark that the wind was gone, but the mist was heavier.  I really couldn’t see a thing.  Something lurked in the mist and that was the entire motivation needed to get back into my sleeping bag and zip up tight, Were or Sheep I cared not, I had my headlamp around my neck and into the sleeping bag I went. 

Figure 3. Breakfast and a soggy map.

Sunday 0545 - Eylesbarrow Tin Mine to New Bridge 
I re-awoke at 5:45 and started some breakfast.  Then a magical thing happened.  The mist started clearing.  For the first time in 15 hours, I had a vague idea where I was, and just how stunning it all was.  It was New Zealand’s Central Plateau.  It was gorgeous, a lake, a forest.  Gasp worthy scenery was all there.  As I sat eating my porridge, Dartmoor Ponies frolicked in the distance.  I sat very still as a stallion and foal came to graze the bit of grass I was camped on.  The sun rose in the south east and blue skies dazzled. 

Figures 4-6. Mist clearing and ponies… frolicking.

I had packed up and was ready to move by 8:00am and took a sanded and cut track north, running parallel to boundary stones marked PCWW 1917.  I paused by a granite cross - Siward’s Cross has been there at least 850 years, marking the monastic Maltern Way.  No plaque.  No visitors centre.  No nothing.  Just a stone cross with a rusting iron repair.  The path was busy with dog walkers and runners as I got closer to Princetown and its imposing prison, built by POWs for POWs of the French and American wars.  I sat outside the High Moorland Visitor Centre at 9:45am waiting for it to open, downstream of the strong smell of bacon and eggs coming from the Inn across the road. 

The visitor centre was excellent and penciled a route on my map for me to get north towards my goal of Okehampton.  They filled my water bottle for me, I bought two postcards and headed across the road to the local convenience store and post office to scribble on them and send them.  I’m not at all used to popping out into civilization in the middle of a walk, so standing scribbling my postcards I became acutely aware of my personal hygiene.  I moved on. 

The route north started at Two Bridges, so I walked the road between them and then turned back onto the Moor at the gated entrance to Wistman’s Wood.  The short climb on to Longaford Tor had me sweating under the warm sun, I followed the ridge to Higher White Tor.  It was noon, everything in my pack was damp and heavy from the previous day, I felt like a cooked meal.  So I stripped down  to my pants and sunbathed as I cooked Camp-Bolognese and let my gear dry scattered in the sun.  A short nap was interrupted by the unmistakable expression of some poor kid stopped mid-sentence by my dazzling and sprawling whiteness under midday sun.  I dressed and packed hurriedly as showers came in from the west.  The helpful folk of the visitor centre had warned of rain getting worse to be quite heavy that night and it showered on and off for the rest of the day. 

My route took me down to Lower White Tor then to the waterfall on the East Dart River.  Tumbling peat-brown water over the rocks the waterfall was postcard perfect and I crossed it, stone hopping to the other side, stopping to change film and take some photos in a break in the showers.  For the first time in documented history I didn’t veer right…  I wish I had.  Instead I slogged straight across a shin deep mire.  Forty-five minutes of grumbling to myself about the bronze age munters who’d felled everything and ended up just making a peat swamp more effectively than the Taupo eruptions ever could.  I picked up a stone wall which led NE to Sittaford Tor and had been to my east the whole time across the bog and then followed the fence line down to Little Varracombe.  I crossed the Teign River whilst in its infancy and headed uphill to Quntin’s Man, the cairn and the Army observation huts which mark the border of the Okehampton Range.  It was a guaranteed nil firing weekend, so I would be heading through the range for the rest of my trip. 

Figure 7. The range.

The walk across the eastern border of the range was rewarding and the highest ground I would cover during the trip.  Large parts of the area are so wet and boggy that they are nearly impossible to cover on foot.  I headed north from the cairn to Peat Pass south of Hangingstone Hill.  The peat pass was a cut made through the peat into granite bedrock by Frank Phillpotts.  The cut was made so that farmers and hunters could travel this area with becoming mired.  A plaque on a stone bears the forthright inscription: THIS STONE MARKS A CROSSING THROUGH THE PEAT, WHICH MAY BE OF USE TO HUNTING AND CATTLEMEN.  I like that, which may be of use.   May.  It was a great use to me and I made sure I pointed that out to a lovely couple I met on Hangingstone Hill.  They had just ascended and were heading for Postbridge, we discussed routes, I was about to descend on my way to Newbridge. 

I picked up a gravel and tarmac Army ring road and covered the last few kilometers to Newbridge with very sore feet.  Spending two days wet and then pounding down hard road had been too much for my sedentary banker feet.  I was very glad to make it to Newbridge, as the dark clouds which had been chasing me from the south, all day, finally broke and the rain started proper.  The comedy began.  My 3 x 3 meter fly had been easy to string over a wall as a lean to the night before, But now faced with no trees, no wall, nothing except a sheep poo covered pile of rocks and ground I had nothing to work with.  I had carried some lightweight universal aluminum tent poles with me and intended to fashion a structure with these.  I started with a high pole front sloping to ground level rear design, and failed.  I moved to a large hoop front to grounded rear, and failed.  Then I tried a high pole front to low pole rear centre line, and failed.  Finally, as the rain pounded I built a Shangri-La of nylon, rope, poles and pegs.  It was a low pole front and rear with closed back and open front design, it was wonderful and doubled as a handy portable bomb-shelter.  The rain became torrential during the night and the newly built Hilton Dartmoor - Newbridge, didn’t even quiver in the rain and wind.  As the squalls swung 180 degrees during the night I simply lay east-west under the fly instead of north-south and moved to the rear of the fly, dry(ish) and happy. 

I had set up the fly quite close to the Black-a-ven Brook and woke up a few times during the night to the noise of the brook going from babbling to busy to bustling to bullish to bursting.  I think it rose a meter during the night but was still a good meter or two low of my camp site.  I boiled water and then under attack from expertly trained 2-para-commando-marine-SAS-green-beret-SF MF-midges I retreated hastily into my sleeping bag liner for cover, with a bag of chocolate buttons for dinner. 

Monday 0700 - Newbridge to Okehampton 
By the morning the midges had given up and I lay and relaxed and reflected as the rain and wind carried on.  I was in no hurry.  I was only 5 kilometers short of Okehampton and had plenty of time to get there.  So I meticulously untied knots and coiled ropes, cleaned tent pegs had a hearty breakfast and messed about in the rain, bone dry and warm under my new army-surplus smock. 

The last hour out of the Moor was a quiet plod, musing on things like how proper sheep looked with a bouncy long tail.  I walked into Okehampton about 10am, bought some fruit and caught a bus to Exeter, offending everyone on board with my eau-de-moor-nautrale.  After the startled gasps of passengers exiting the bus as they caught a wiff of me going past, I thought it was probably best to have a wash before the train-ride back to Basingstoke.  So, a quick chat with a woman at the ‘i’ spot (always a lower case I?…) I walked down to the Pyramids Leisure Centre, by way of a Poundland for £1 shower-gel, deodorant and a towel.  I had an excellent swim, stretched and enjoyed a good soak.  Then I showered and changed into what stunk the least.  Which were my long daggy camp trousers and a hole ridden woolen thermal top.  I was unable to face putting my wet and putrid boots back on I put on my jandals and did my best impersonation of a homeless man as I made cheese and salami snacks with what was left over in my pack, sitting on a park bench, unshaved, unbothered by the showers. 

Figure 8. My view from a park bench.

I slept on the train back home, able to chuckle to myself, as I am now, that in the comfort of a train or your home, a bit of rain and mud on Dartmoor all seems very insignificant.  Whereas at the time, you’re adamant that if you find the really boggy bit with the red grasses one more time you’re just going to sit down and call your Mum for advice and help.  Funnily enough, as I turned on my mobile as I got to Okehampton, I had voicemail, just Mum checking in that I was ok, from 20,000 kilometers away.  Dartmoor, done. 

I woke up a tiny bit lost, got up for a pee
and went back to bed. Then
it dawned (on me) the day was already alive…
That I had an itch to scritch, a jiggle to wiggle
and I had a wee giggle and sprung into a beanie
leapt into the living room and put on a favourite jam
(Strand of Oaks, Eraserland) a little bit loud…
Threw windows open wide, took a deep breath,
felt clean spring air pulled inside.
Then I brewed coffee and ate fresh warm yoghurt

I KNEW what I wanted to do:

WRITE THIS CARD TO SAY THANK YOU!!!

for letting me sleep in, for being so excited about breakfast, for packing a suitcase, for running to the car, for loving fairies and princesses, for the way you cats groove, for the perpetual art station, for crackers on the floor, for chalk drawings, road paint, riding bikes in the sun, delivering cupcakes in the rain, for tilting your heads and assessing everything and everyone.

Thank you for let’s pretend and will you play with us.

Thank you for a bachelors morning. Top tip,

one is enough.

The apples needed thinning
The figs are nearly done
My top lip, dry, stuck on an eye tooth, like a fruit peel glued down by the sun.
The wind at my tshirt
The flax pods burgeoning, whipping my knees and hands
Superhero powers unmasked, drunk, on a bike, barreling through the community orchard on the cusp of this sticky night.

I’ve been stripping back the layers, each carapace a weight off my throat
Shedding others’ raruraru
Looking for My return home
I know I’m out of nick, two lady walkers pressed hard back into the ivy, laughing nervously like they’ve been trained
The translation unneeded (leave us alone).

A fresh shorn ewe in the paddock betwixt the houses and the river
An emissary from the other place
She sniffed my knuckles
Threw off my scritch
And said with a toss of the head not yet mate, go on.

So I rode another block or two
pausing where I wasn’t seen
but the late blackbird preening
She saw me
High in cables.
Pretending to nibble a mite in her armpit, long tail feathers fanned for balance: yeah. I know I’ve been seen.

Then I smelt it.
Packet sweet and sour sauce
Pumped out kitchen ducts
The Cossie Club in full swing.
Then I saw them
Carefree two up
The kids out riding it made meaning.
Then I felt it.
I leant into tide of air
I threw myself into it
Folded, pedalling, gasping
That burn in legs all mine.

So as I flotsam a burden
I find a new threshold
Raw edges picked at
Bailage wrapped purple
New covers growing
Fresh grass green

Picking my way home down alleys
Under a slate pool tile sky
Weaving through families gawping at flashing L E D Christmas scenes.

Face tired from an affected grimace
Sand fly bites all over
Bodily racked
A soul both withered and of promise
A home dually serene and raucous

Three sleeps
Christmas

Hallelujah
Holy shit

Maybe it’s just a dream.

Turns out still a big fan of gas stuff.

Some time back now I used to ride these ways.  Once daily duties were done you see, end of the day.
They were interesting times you know, it was much implied by the government, that one should lay low.
Cooped up a bit, holed up you might say.  Just her indoors, me and the tin lids, watching tempers, fray.
Then there was the hunger my friend.  Insatiable.  Gee you just wouldn’t stop. Fridge, pantry, fruit bowl, no end.

What were we talking about cobber?  Oh the bicycle, indeed.  Yeah well, end of the day you’d get out, away from the bother.
Just me and the bike, well yes, true and a podcast too.  Feeling quite rebellious, riding by light.  Turning that off too.
Got pulled up by the coppers one night.  They were looking for another geezer. A menacing bloke I had just seen, he was a fright.
Funny, they were looking for a bigger dude, with a beard, riding around town on a bike, me! Bigger! Beard!  Rude.

Tell you what else was trouble, if you don’t mind me bending your ear!  Bloody howlies down the road, all bursting their bubbles.
I’d ride past them, in daylight though, and they’d be sitting in moonchairs far too close, boozing up in the middle of the road.
The missus told her mate who was acquaintances of theirs, she then hit up the howlies, and well, a rift appeared.
Mate. Even then the in-laws took the Michael.  “Ah they’re already in my bubble”, I didn’t trifle.

Hard to believe it’s been only one hundred and twenty odd days. Since we went into our bubbles.  You see?  We’ve come a way.
An Indian Summer, in the local vernacular.  When the sun just goes on and on. The feeling was spectacular.
Feels like an early spring now aye mush?  Cherry, Crimson Magnolia, Freesia, even the lawn’s looking lush.
So I took the bike back out across the polo grounds.  The old route aye buddy? The one that circles town.

A tall tree, walking proudly

Amongst mountains

Effortlessly under a pure sky

Rapping wildly about what

They

Are doing that’s never been done before.

raahui / rāhui
1. (verb) (-ngia,-tia) to put in place a temporary ritual prohibition, closed season, ban, reserve - traditionally a rāhui was placed on an area, resource or stretch of water as a conservation measure or as a means of social and political control for a variety of reasons which can be grouped into three main categories: pollution by tapu, conservation and politics.  Source: https://maoridictionary.co.nz/word/6420

At the beginning of New Zealand’s COVID-19 lockdown I loaded a film into a camera, jumped on a bike, and rode around my subdivision, snapping what I saw that was at odds with what I normally see.

It was a weird experience for me.  Early autumn, 26ºc, blue skies, still - but apocalyptic and desecrated.

The film came back from the lab today, scanned in mirror image: which I think suits my raahui perfectly.

Thank you to my neighbours and the community of Cambridge Park for this.

“From the ticket pocket of the shorts you fumble out bookmatches and an empty Lipton teabag wrapper. You stuff the shorts down into the mummy bag to warm. Next you take the flashlight out of one of your boots (which are standing just off to the left of the sleeping pad). Then you put the teabag wrapper down in the little patch you cleared for the stove last night (on the right side of the bed, because the wind was blowing from the left last night; and very close to the groundsheet so that you don’t have to stretch). You set the teabag wrapper alight and hold the stove (which is the Svea) by its handle with the base of the bowl just above the burning paper. Soon you see in the beam of the flashlight that gasoline is welling up from the nozzle. You put the stove down on the teabag wrapper, snuffing out the flame. Gasoline seeps down the generator of the stove and into the little depression in the bowl that encircles the base of the generator. When the depression is full you close the stove valve and ignite the gasoline. When it has most burned away you reopen the valve. If you time it dead right the last guttering flame ignites the jet. Otherwise you light it with another march. The stove roars healthily, almost waking you up.”

— Colin Fletcher - The Complete Walker IV

This, amongst many other passages about gasoline stoves, in The Complete Walker, set a long, low simmering flicker of love in my soul for the idea of a gasoline stove ownership.  

Today my new-to-me old Optimus 8R gasoline stove arrived, via the courier that is Mum, and I set straight to setting it alight.

…Open the fuel valve all the way, pricking the jet with the inbuilt cleaning needle and ensure the jet wets out with fuel
Close the valve firmly to make sure you don’t get a flare up
Pour methylated spirits into the priming bowl under the jet and cone
Strike a match and light the meths, peering into the bowl to see the flame
Contemplate the wonder of life as the meths burns down and finally the last boiling remnants nearly burn down
Open the fuel valve, catching the last of the meths flames
Fettle the valve as the stove warms up enjoying the characteristic roar
Put the kettle on the stove and marvel…