The Wondrous Burden of the Dartmoor Enthusiast

One of the great mysteries of my unremarkable existence, and truly, I mean great in the sense of 'perplexing' rather than 'splendid', is the remarkable ease with which I manage to convince otherwise sensible individuals to listen to me go on, and on, about Dartmoor Photography. I am, to put it mildly, a menace to camera clubs far and wide. Picture it: hapless souls, tucked away in village halls up and down the country, forced to sit through what must be an Olympic level parade of Tors. More images of granite outcrops than any sane person could possibly require. And yet, for reasons that frankly baffle both me and probably the professional psychiatric community, they endure my over enthusiastic musings.

Now, here is where the story takes a turn toward the utterly unbelievable. My droning and the accompanying cavalcade of rocks apparently served as a siren song, a peculiar, moorland-scented siren song, to Brian and Sue, who promptly decided to haul themselves all the way from the reliably sunny (or so I imagine) flatlands of Norfolk to our gloriously lumpy corner of the globe.

The pressure, as you can imagine, was palpable. I was the hype-man, the enthusiastic amateur, and now I had two highly skilled photographers looking to me for inspiration. A quick snap of the high street, the obligatory local Co-op, perhaps, was simply not going to cut the mustard. The usual guaranteed winner, Brentor Church at sunrise, was a non-starter; late October dawns tend to be a sort of monochromatic grey that would make a tax auditor look cheerful.

A frantic rummage through the mental archive, then, and a new plan was hatched: Shaugh Prior. A place so ridiculously saturated with colour and interest that the local tourist board really ought to be cutting it a hefty commission. I’d struck gold. It turned out Brian was the sort of man who liked to get right down into the earthy muck of things, finding particular joy in the fungal riots that seemed to spawn from every mossy log. Sue, meanwhile, took a wider, more expansive view, quietly soaking up the genuinely riotous palette Mother Nature had splashed along the riverbank.

We wandered for what felt like a mere handful of minutes, it was, in point of fact, a good couple of hours and by the end, I had two very happy 'snappers.' Memory cards bulging with scenes of genuine beauty, it was time to hand Dartmoor's newest converts back over to the national infrastructure. The pressure was off. The granite had performed its magic.

I must say, after all that, I felt I’d earned my stripes. Perhaps I should just send the National Park my CV. After all, if I can lure people away from Norfolk, what can't I do?