This isn't about the buildings as such, but instead it's an article documenting four days spent on a training course here in 1991. In fact, the above photo is the only decent one of the building itself and that was taken right at the end before our journey back, along with the one below.
I have a lot of these photos - all black and white - as I was taking a City & Guilds module in Photography that year, and I intended using them to make a photo documentary for my finished project. As it happens, I chose another topic consisting of interesting buildings around Exeter instead. Architectural photographer in the making!
Set in the beautiful Devon countryside, the centre is next to the West Dart River and the nearest town is Princetown.
Interestingly, the bridge across the river is called Prince Hall Bridge and is a Grade II Listed Building. You can just about see its single span arch through the trees, seen below. A build of granite, which is plentiful on Dartmoor, it was erected circa late 18th or early 19th century.
Although it was only four days in duration, the course was jam packed with adventure activities; outdoor ones during the day plus two evenings for an optional night walk - one of which I went on and thoroughly enjoyed - video evenings for those who stayed in and an evening at The Plume of Feathers pub in Princetown to play skittles.
We arrived just after monday lunchtime, were put into smaller groups and did some problem solving in the afternoon. Then in the evening we had the first night walk. A really useful idea was numbering the participants instead of using our names, so every now and then we were stopped and had to say our numbers in sequence to ensure no-one was lost or wandered off. It was much quicker and easier than trying to remember names or match them to a list.
Self-catering, each group took it in turns to cook meals and make lunchpacks for everyone. Our first full day was on the tuesday, and it was our turn in the kitchen, so our morning activity was close to home and consisted of problem solving involving two suspended cannisters. The object was to make the top cannister heavier and displace the bottom one, seen in the photos above and below.
After lunch we walked around the forest by Belvador Tor where we practiced orienteering and had other problem solving activities. Dartmoor is famous for the sparse countryside with tors, which are hills topped with granite boulders where erosion has brought them to the surface. and its own brand of half-wild ponies. However, there are also forests and smaller woods along with farm land and a more typically British countryside. It's a very large National Park.
These first set of photos were really bad, which is probably why I decided not to use them as my C&G project after all, plus I wasn't able to take photos of everything whilst participating in some of the activities.
This particular evening was the pub visit, which was good fun playing skittles and an opportunity to socialise with others on the course.
Then on the Wednesday we went kyaking on the River Dart, which I absolutely loved, followed by raft building in the afternoon. I have no photos from that day as I didn't want to risk my camera on the water, so I just concentrated on enjoying it instead. In the evening we had a project of making a video, which was a bit of a taster before my university course of Media Arts & Design Arts in the coming Autumn.
Then the last activity day on the Thursday was called Operation Buzzard. Our groups were mixed up so that we could work with some different people as well as activities we hadn't tried so far.
Oh absolute terror! Those who've read a lot of my blog articles might know that I am horrendously acrophobic. I can't even stand on a stool without getting vertigo! Anyway, our first activity was abseiling, lol.
This was abseiling down from Hay Tor and once we'd climbed up I really didn't want to go down. It took the instructor some time to cajole me into doing it and even came down partway - without ropes! - to start me off.
Once near the ground I didn't stop until I was actually lying on my back on the grass. If I remember rightly I was crying my eyes out all the way down so it was such a relief!
In the afternoon we went to the quarry near Hay Tor to make a raft, using what we'd learnt the afternoon before. Once built we took it in turns to be pulled across the quarry pond on the raft.
Some of our group in the above photos at Hay Tor having lunch and a break between activities, including Ian who was our leader from Devon Training For Skills who organised the course.
Us participants were undertaking a year course of employment training with jobs and training provided by local
companies. This break on Dartmoor was to help bolster self-confidence and a very welcome opportunity to do things we probably wouldn't normally do. Like abseiling, lol!
It was a really enjoyable activity and I took a lot of photos.
I
also took a photo of this old winch left here from quarrying. I didn't
know at the time but there were also rails nearby for the trucks
carrying the quarry stone away.
After that we went caving. I didn't appreciate the climb down into it very much, although I loved it otherwise, and enjoyed exploring limestone caves some 17 years later during my urbexing days.
At some point (probably after abseiling) I had a photo taken of just myself and then with the group. I honestly can't remember how the camera was set up or if someone else took it for us, but it was really good to have that record.
On that evening was another night walk, which I didn't take part in. Instead those who stayed in enjoyed watching videos, including The Terminator, which I hadn't seen before.
Then the next day was the morning clean-up. This photo is one of my all-time favourites and the best from this week.
And one with the ubiquitous 'rabbit ears'.
And then the journey back to Exeter. Once there I went straight to the Exeter Darkroom and developed my films. Although the course was only four days long it felt really weird to be on my own whilst walking through town. A fantastic week, which I'll forever be grateful for.
This one took rather a long time to do, what with editing and re-editing to get it right. Thankfully, I still have the diary from that year and was able to check out which days and activities matched. The funniest thing was a coincidence with a picture in my Winnie-The-Poo diary with lovely illustrations from the original books by Ernest H. Shepherd. You might not believe this, and I didn't know about it until I wrote it up afterwards, so I scanned the diary and appropriate pages.
(Some of my thoughts and the weekend concerning family stuff was personal so I blanked them out with black strips of paper. Redacted!)
Anyway, here it is at the top of the page below; an illustration of Piglet abseiling. Brilliant! :)
And there we have it!
This time I know exactly what's coming up next as I've also been working on that one at the same time; another Useful Books article about English churches, abbeys, priories & cathedrals. The main body of writing is almost done and I've taken the photos, which I've started post-editing, so it won't be too long before getting that one up.
I've also finally taken some more Fore Street, Beer photos. More about that at the end of the next post. The last day of September and I hope everyone's having a great Autumn, despite whatever's happening in the world; enjoy nature if you can and all best wishes until next time. :)
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