Even if it's raining you'll be fascinated

Walk on Dartmoor right now and find millions
of treasures .....

You don't need to seek them out.
They are festooned over every surface.
Clinging on to bits of old wood felled on the forest floor. Sitting alongside a carpet of sphagnum moss or a blown up pile of old leaves, shapes and form all but disappeared.
All thriving in the drip drip drip of persistant light rain.
Layers of close fitting fungus like a bank of babies' ears.
Gentle and perfect.


And glistening in the wet grass ...
A few stray buff coloured Fairies' Bonnets.
Latin name Coprinus disseminatus.
Usually showing their heads in Spring, they are already here, eager to get going. Sometimes you come across great brigades of them making their way downhill in a clearing like mini sized extras on a Walt Disney film of the forest.
Dartmoor is stuffed full of such wonders.
Come and see

Click a photo - you can almost smell the undergrowth...

More entries for the auction this Saturday.

More entries for the auction in Chagford this coming weekend - John arrived with a couple of huge boxes, inside which were 113 collectible cars. Corgi classics etc.
You never know what will turn up at the sale. See you there. You'll spot me behind a bacon bap!
Chagford is well worth a visit anyway, as some of the shops have sales on now.
3 pubs and Whiddons Tea room are all great. The Three Crowns is still undergoing upgrading work. The New Forge is closed until Wednesday 25th, but over the road is the Courtyard with good veggie food and next to the post Office is Black's the village delicatessen stuffed with all manner of quiches, big fat olives. So, no need to be worried about food then ?

Chagford Auction in January, a chance for a bargain

If like me you enjoy a good auction, then get yourselves along to Chagford on Saturday 21st later this month for John Wood's regular 'Dartmoor Auctioneer' Auction. He holds them 4 or 5 times a year and I take the pictures for his website of some of the lots as they come in.
Two things that took my eye when he arrived with a bagful of jewellery this week were a large pendant with an iridescent blue stone set in silver.
I meant to ask John just what the stone is, when he came back to collect, but forgot. I think it might be Lapis Lazuli. And an amethyst and pearl ring is something else that Santa could leave in my stocking any year.
John does makes me laugh. Each auction he arrives a few weeks before with an array of goodies for me to picture, and always, he bemoans the fact that he hasn't got enough lots to offer, and then every time without fail for the last 4 years that I have been running his website, come the day of the auction he's saying that there are far too many lots and he doesn't know if he will get through them all. Sometimes late lots have to be held over for the next date.
There will no doubt be more items to show on his website as we get closer to the 21st.
He will arrive with something out of the ordinary under his arm asking me if I could add this to the website, plus one or two other interesting 'things' that happen to be in the back of his lorry.
All manner of stuff turns up. Last year he auctioned off a huge bottle of vintage champagne for charity. Fortunately for the auction onlookers, there are usually a couple of dozen chairs in the sale and the crowd has to rise as the chaps who point out the lots hold them aloft for all to see. Last time a wooden harpsicord made a good price and each time I spot some must-have thing to bid on that Rob puts his foot down about. I have been known to ask someone else in the hall to bid for me so that Rob doesn't get wound up, and then I get wound up at his side thinking that he might just cave in and make a last minute bid for the item if it's going for a low price.
So far that hasn't happened.
You have met Rob have you ?

Click here to see more jewellery on the auction website