New vocabulary: Self-isolation, social distancing and lockdown

What a difference a couple of months and a minuscule virus make! Here we are on Dartmoor. It has never been so quiet and peaceful with virtually no traffic other than the usual farmers rushing around and locals on their food shopping run.
And the skies are clear of aeroplanes as well, with just an occasional helicopter to remind us that the world is still out there.
At least I can walk the dog on the moor close to our home and enjoy the lovely weather (for now at least) and the solitude. I do feel sorry for those in flats and built-up areas with little or no outside space.
We must accentuate the positives amongst all the bad news. It will be a while before life returns to normal. Will it ever, given that we must tackle the climate emergency as well?

Climate Emergency

We've suddenly arrived at an emergency and I am not sure how, or if, we will escape from it. We should have seen it coming but instead it is there in front of us demanding action.
What can we do? We can each do small things and at a personal level that seems the only option. At least then you are doing something rather than waiting for governments to decide if they can afford it, or even if they believe it.
So, we have installed some solar panels, and we are also putting in a battery to collect the power that currently goes to waste (or benefits the suppliers of electricity to our neighbours).
We have also switched to a fully renewable electricity tariff and we are looking at ways of replacing our dependence on oil for heating (e.g. heat pumps).
I feel guilty every time I go out in the car so an electric car must not be very far off. I could go on, but will leave that for a later post.
Please comment with your own plans and thoughts. Together we can sort this out.

Holiday

Just to let my many (???!!) readers know that we are going on holiday for two weeks so there may not be any new posts in that time.
So, where does someone who lives in such a lovely place as Dartmoor go to on holiday? We talk about 'beauty overload' here, implying that you have to escape every so often otherwise you would lose your sense of balance vis a vis the 'real' world. The favoured destination to redress the balance is some form of desolate industrial wasteland, but we have instead opted this time for the Isles of Scilly via the Scillonian. Should be good.

Dartmoor Speed Limits etc

Having recently written about animals roaming free on the moor, what did I see yesterday on the Princetown to Yelverton road but a dead lamb on the roadside. This must happen a lot, basically because on those 'main' roads across the moor, people travel too fast and maybe don't care about hitting animals. It's awful.
It could all be prevented with speed bumps or similar forcing people to keep their speed down.
At the entrance to Widecombe village is a 40mph sign, i.e. 40 mph through Widecombe village is not breaking the speed limit, regardless of the people wandering across the road and the school just round the corner. Go out of the village along the Natsworthy lane and you see a no limit sign - so 60 mph is OK. Of course if you tried those speeds you would end up in a hedge, but what damage might you cause before that happened.
I can't understand the general allowance of a 40mph limit on Dartmoor's roads - inclduing our local lane with a steep descent and a 90 degree blind corner at the bottom. It's just crazy.
40mph may be just about OK on the 'main' routes, but 30mph should be the limit on most of the lanes and 20mph through the villages.
This should not be a problem for most people who are out for a trip and want to enjoy the view. Nor should it be a problem for the locals who follow these speeds anyway. As usual it is just the few who cause the problem.

On Dartmoor Animals Roam Free

Yes, it's true. Within the area of the commons or open moorland, farmers have a right to allow their animals to roam free, within certain quotas - in fact there is also payment made to farmers for them to keep some animals off the moor so that the total can be controlled.
Ponies, cows and sheep all roam free - and they all have owners.
It is tempting to feed the ponies but this is not a good idea as it encourages them nearer to the road and accidents are not uncommon. Many animals use the roads to sleep on - they tend to be drier than the grass areas and warmer in winter. The black cows are the hardest to spot when you are driving at night!! In general keep your speed down. I think the 40 mph limit is too high (another blog for this).
It is one of the wonders of Dartmoor to see the animals free.

Also on the green at Widecombe they are often to be seen happily grazing. Great photo opportunity!

Widecombe Fair

Our History Group is currently researching the history of Widecombe Fair. This can take many forms. We have discovered an artist (well, not exactly discovered), Pamela Colman Smith who produced an illustrated limited-edition work on Widdicombe Fair in 1899, of which there is a copy in the Devon Records Office. You can find out more about her here. We don't know much about her links with Widecombe, although apparently her friend Ellen Terry had a house in Chudleigh (which is not far away) at one time.
The pictures in the book are wonderful. Take a look at this one.

If you want to view more of the pctures try this link.
Our thanks to Holly who compiled the Pamela Colman Smith site data.

Lichen

Further to the recent post about Dartmoor having its own weather system, I think because our air usually comes straight from the Atlantic, when it reaches us it is still very pure, i.e. it contains very few pollutants. This is not all good. Roses, apparently, like some pollution in the air and black spot - an unpleasant fungal infection (of roses) - although controllable in an urban garden, thrives in our clean air.
The other beneficiary (apart from our lungs, of course) is lichen, which grows everywhere. This picture:

shows the lichen that has grown all over one of our garden seats - the pic just shows part of a single strut. On close inspection it is very like coral - it certainly has coral's variety of form.
Lichen will only grow like this where the air is clean enough. So, if you've got it, you know your air is in pretty good shape.

Dartmoor Is So Peaceful

I thought last night, as I often do, how peaceful it is here. It is one of the main attractions. Yes, you hear the odd car (or tractor), but especially in the evening the only sounds are natural - birds, cows, ponies etc. Even aeroplanes are a rarity, a blessing in this day and age.
You get quite attached to the birds - a whole blog in itself. This time of year (midsummer) there is a bird that starts its song at 3.30 a.m. It's a challenge to keep sleeping especially if you are a light sleeper like me.
But to get back to the peace - what a rarity to have no background traffic drone. The main thing is - we really appreciate it. It's rarely mentioned but is always there and invaluable.
And today is really warm and sunny - so back outside (even the visitors head for the coast when it's really hot, so daytime traffic is quiet today).
Have fun whatever you are doing.

Dartmoor Has Its Own Weather System

Dartmoor is a large granite mass which pushed its way up out of the earth 100 or so million years ago. It is now the first place the Atlantic weather hits as it makes its way from the prevailing south-westerly direction.
So the last couple of days have been extremely murky. We have sat in permanent low cloud.
As a result, on a shopping trip to Exeter yesterday, my wife wore sturdy shoes, jeans and fleece against the weather, only to find, on reaching Exeter (20 miles away), that the sun was out and everyone else was walking around in strappy dresses and light sandals (not sure what the correct terms are here).
You can see, we have our own climate and our own, quite separate, life to everyone else.

Broadband - or lack of it

Widecombe is in the 0.4% of the UK population that does not have BT broadband. BT has no plans to provide it because it is not economically viable.
There is a chance that we will get broadband either through a wireless link, or via a SWRDA grant, but it is hard to know when.
I am not rampantly left-wing at all, but, if BT were still a public (nationalised) company, its decisions would be made on a completely different basis - there would be no discrimination against different groups, and perhaps 'monopoly' basic service providers should not be in private hands for that reason (hence the regulator I suppose).
If BT had always been private then we may still be waiting for telephones up here, because to provide them would not, in their words, be 'economically viable'. It seems wrong that the SWRDA should have to find grant money (taxpayers money in some form), to fill these gaps.
Incidentally, electricity only came to Widecombe in 1963 - not that long ago really (before that we would have used generators). Again if the electricity companies had been private, perhaps we would still be using generators.
So (some of) the disadvantages of living in rural areas are caused by companies being privatised. That is weird. I have to say there are plenty of advantages too, so I am not in general complaining, just trying to make a point about decision making.
I would like to hear from others with views on this