Scant progress has been made towards contact with my new friend. I haven't seen him since my last report.
Instead, I have been forced into wearing increasingly insulting head apparel for photo opportunities. Where is the justice in this?
I have also been back to Dartmoor - mercifully uneventful this time - and shall return in a few weeks' time.
In the meantime...
No justice at all. Frankly unacceptable.
I think I have found a dog friend to have adventures with, like Jasper with Ewan and Fizzy and Gisele! Since I last wrote about my day I have been three times with the woods and have seen him two times at least.
I haven't got very many friends who are dogs. I like them but sometimes I find it hard to understand them. My best dog friend is Rolo. He is a big black Labrador and I think he used to be one of Gisele's favourite husbands. I wanted him to be my husband too, but he wouldn't commit himself. I am also friends with Hastings, who looks like Rolo and lives with his same people, but who is a puppy. He is fun to run and play with at Abbotstone, though I cannot understand the half of what he is saying.
Here are some pictures of my new dog friend in the work yard where Jasper and Ewan used to play:
I called out to him, more than once, "Hello dog! Will you like to be my friend and make some adventures with me?" but I don't think he heard, because he got up and walked away. It's the same with the red kites at Abbotstone. They just look at me and then fly away.
But I will try again the next time I see this new fellow. He looks like a friendly dog to make adventures with.
For now, I am just having fun with Roo. The bluebell flowers are out and are very pretty this year. Here I am enjoying them last week:
Good evening to you.
A most agreeable day today. It has been very warm and I was pleased to sit outside at lunchtime in the warm Spring sunshine. Here I am, savouring the warm rays, while - if you can spot it - the first pretty butterfly of the year rests on the wall behind me...
I listened with interest to the tales of Ewan and Fizzy, their adventures with Jasper and subsequently with Gisele. I walked down the oft-trod bridleway, where once they played with Ewan's football. I don't know what a football is. We walked past the badger sett, still active and now so enlarged as to be partially fenced-off for public safety. But I have no wish to tally with a badger in its own home.
Miss Roo says the echoes of happy times are all around us there, in the scent of the flowers, the breeze in the trees, the chirruping of the birds and the gentle buzz of the insects. She says that we will make all new adventures there - but just us. There are no others there now. But the woods will forever be the place that made memories, preserved in text and pixels here, if you care to seek them out.
I won't have the same stories and adventures like Jasper, or Gisele. But I hope the ones I make will not be dull for being different. After all - I have already involved myself in a significant scrape involving the military, many shenanigans and the concealment of an entire chicken curry in Roo's pants.
I have already had cause to speak sternly again to a red kite at Abbotstone, just the one this time, but he followed my progress from the air a little too closely. I have warned him that I know what he is about, and that he ought to examine his conscience. He just stared at me. Hmmm.
When first we arrived at Roo's workplace, and location of many tales of glory (and some not quite SO glorious...), the door was propped open. Upon closing it, a really rather remarkable sight was there to behold. Muddy marks from long, long ago, which have withstood the elements and the years (the door is behind shutters, so somewhat protected from the ravages of time). Little stamps that echo the barks and playful yelps of those who capered in the yard so long ago now, but which seem as fresh as when they were first laid new:
Good evening to you.
Here I write - Rory Gamin de Pycombe. I have been learning as much as I can to be able to write my words on this blog, which Roo (Mama) tells me is now mine. I don't think I will be doing as well as the ones before me, Gisele and Jasper. They look like they were better of words than I am.
But here is a bit about me to begin with. I probably should ask you not to judge me by the relation of my misadventures on Dartmoor. I would like to say that I regret my choices on that day and I am sorry for the havoc that I caused. But I don't and I'm not - I had a lovely time. Roo has booked another holiday for Dartmoor this summer for us. She says that we will not be troubling His Majesty's Armed Forces again and that I will be on my very best behaviour. Of course I will.
I have been living here with Roo for a little bit more than a year now. I first met her on 14 February 2023 and came home to live in my house on 19 February. Some people called The Blue Cross helped me to find Roo. The picture of me on the left in my black harness was the one on the Blue Cross website that she saw, and this is what they said about me. I was called Ory then:
I can't deny any of what's written there - that sums me up fair enough.
I was born in Wales, though I'm not sure where. My dam (mother) was a French Bulldog and my sire (father) was a Staffordshire Bull Terrier ("that must have been an interesting evening" says Roo). For the first three years of my life I just lived with my mother. My brothers and sisters went to other people's houses but they said that I was the best so they kept me. My mother and I did alright together. We had lots of outside and some inside all to ourselves. People gave us food, but we mostly looked after ourselves.
Then, one day, someone came to where we were. I think he was related to the people who gave us food. There were lots of things said that I didn't understand. Things like "not right" and "neglect", but I didn't really understand. The man left my mother there, I think she was happier there, and took me on a very long journey away. I didn't understand, but he was nice to me and I didn't mind. Then I lived with him mostly indoors in a house that we shared with other men. That was fun. We played games (I liked the rough wrestling games best), had nice food and I could help myself to what I wanted. But I wasn't allowed to go outside by myself anymore and I had to wear a harness and a lead every time the man took me out. I didn't understand and I didn't like it very much. We had a park that we walked to and then we walked home again when I had been to the toilet. There were some other dogs (I didn't know that they were other dogs - they didn't look like my mother or me) who didn't like me. They argued at me when I tried to be nice and then sometimes they bit me. So I learned to be worried about other dogs and decided that the only way for them not to bite me was for me to bite them first. That didn't make me or my man very popular, and it was a big city with only one park to go in. That didn't help matters.
And then my man person had to change his working job and we went to live in a different place with different other men. That was nice too, but we only had one room for us, and not a whole house. The man was working lots. I know he loved me very much, but that is when he started speaking to The Blue Cross people, which made him very very sad. They were nice. They came to visit us in our room and made some films of me going for my walks. Not long after that, me and the man got on a bus and had a long ride to some buildings in the countryside, like a farm but with dogs and cats and little horses. My man had to leave me in a room and go somewhere else. When I was waiting there, I could hear voices outside and saw one of The Blue Cross ladies bring another lady into the next room where she sat down. The new lady looked friendly and I jumped up and down at the glass in the door because I wanted to meet her and be friends. I like making human friends. So I was brought out of the room and met the lady, who was Roo, and then we went for a long walk and talk with The Blue Cross lady. We went around some fields and they had made it so another dog kept walking by, to see what I would do. We saw some deer in a field too (they had those in Wales, hehehe) but I did my best to be a good boy. After that, the new lady said goodbye and I was taken back to my man in another room and we went back home on the bus.
About a week later, we got on the bus again. That was quite nice. We went to the same like a farm place, only my man seemed a bit more sad. He gave me lots of cuddles and said goodbye. Then I went into another new room and onto a table, where someone in a uniform grabbed hold of me and stuck a massive needle in my neck. This was not nice. It was, apparently, "a microchip". While I was still yelping my disgust at that, I was stabbed with another smaller needle - "vaccinations", whatever they may be. I was highly displeased and vowed that I would not put up with that nonsense ever again. But I didn't have long to dwell on that. I was soon ushered into another room, to be reunited with the lady from before - Roo. We went for another nice walk (no deer this time) and then into a room where lots of bits of paper were signed. Then I had my photograph taken. And then I went out just with Roo and Ganna (her mother). I had a special space just for me in a car - a whole car, just for us - with a cushion and a blanket and something to eat. We drove for quite a long time and then went for a lovely walk. After that, just Roo and me went to another house and she said that it was where I live now. A whole house, just for we two, not one room. And there was a garden too, but I didn't want to go into it, in case I ended up in Wales again.
I am very very lucky, but I didn't understand why everything had changed again. I was sad not to see my man again. He had been nice to me. The Blue Cross lady said something like "there was lots of love and good intentions there, but he was unable to give Ory the time and life that he needed". Something like that. Roo wrote him a letter, not with names on or anything like that, just a thank you for all he had done for me and saying that I would be a loved dog, for The Blue Cross people to send to him. I hope they did. He helped to make my life better and I am thankful.
I found it quite easy to learn the ways of my new house with Roo. I was very happy in my new life, very much. Here I am, all happy:
We set off in the New Blue Corsa on Saturday 15 July. I had prepared well in advance (or so I thought), armed with a waist-harness with secure pack for safe tethering of an exuberant and strong young dog to ones self, a newly-purchased second hand GPS device and a new waterproof jacket in a rolled-up pack. More on those items later. I had even procured a new personal letterboxing stamp, based on my previous ones:
Sweet Gisele-Stephanie never had a letterboxing stamp (I was mostly too poor or too unwell to letterbox more than a couple of times with her, sadly), though she is immortalised standing at the central Southern Dartmoor's Ducks Pool letterbox on my work Teams background...
...)To set the scene - it was the first holiday that I’ve had properly by myself since @2016. And the first time back to Dartmoor under my own steam for many, MANY years. So, this week away was much anticipated and dearly looked-forward-to. And my first ever holiday and letterboxing trip with Rory Gamin de Pycombe.
Exciting! How could anything go wrong…?
I should have
known that it was cursed from the outset. The very first day, in fact.
Before leaving
for Dartmoor, I knew I’d need a new waterproof coat - so off I went to Mountain
Warehouse on my way back from a work meeting.
Being currently a larger lady, the choice is somewhat limited… I spotted
some macs rolled up in individual packs and one in a large size – “brilliant” I
thought, I’ll have that. I was in a bit
of a rush as it was after a lengthy work meeting and I was on my way home, so I
grabbed it, bought it - I didn’t unwrap it but just put it in my rucksack. The very first day out we went off onto the
Moor and we were a good hour into our walk, when it started pouring down with
rain. “No problem” I thought, and I put the rucksack down, got the new packed jacket
out; unpacked it - it was a pair of f***ing trousers.
I taught the
dog a few new words that day.
So that was day
one.
Day two we
began by going into Plymouth to procure a new waterproof jacket in a vast Go
Outdoors store on a godforsaken industrial estate. It was grim just getting
there and back, unhelped by having to negotiate the same hellish roundabout on
which Jasper had once memorably silently vomited all over the gearstick whilst
we were stopped at traffic lights... New
jacket purchased (after having tried it on instore – you can’t be too careful…)
we headed to the very North part of Dartmoor, really remote – right out on the
military ring road from Okehampton. A traffic accident near Tavistock and
subsequent diversion meant that the journey to our intended destination, which
would have taken @ 50 minutes from our hotel, took some 5 hours to complete. I had a GPS device which I’d bought second-hand
from eBay (my original trusty one having died a death some years back) but it looked
and seemed alright when I was programming it the night before.
Out we got onto
the moor in the direction of our first waypoint and the GPS display suddenly
started spinning round and round and then just died, never to resurrect. So we
had to abandon the walk - we just couldn’t do it without the GPS device – and return
to the hotel. I found and ordered a brand-new
GPS unit from Amazon (£216) that they could deliver the next day and
ascertained that the hotel reception were happy to accept delivery for me.
However, they needed a one-time password (OTP) for the delivery driver and,
although the hotel was lovely, and the staff particularly were really REALLY
lovely - their first language was not English. I had to explain the delivery
and the concept of a one time password and phone that in to them from the moor when
it arrived, but that was alright; all went well and I received the device as
planned.
Rory professed
himself “unimpressed” with Dartmoor thus far. I can’t say I blamed him. I wasn’t too impressed myself.
Still feeling
highly pleased with myself, off we went back out to the North moor on the
Wednesday for our third attempt at the planned walk, with new waterproof
jacket, new functioning and fully-programmed GPS… and here is where the fates
conspired against me in the cruellest of ways.
I had bought a
special belt thing to clip Rory to, knowing him to be a strong, fit lad, so I thought
I was being canny by both holding him on the lead and ensuring that he was
clipped to me to prevent sudden escape. Off
we went, out to our first waypoint which we found with the new GPS with very
little trouble (thinking “ah-ha! this was money well-spent”). On leaving that waypoint, Rory jumped down
from a low rocky shelf and, at the exact same time, saw a sheep in very close
proximity. He leapt and lunged at the same time and the thing around my waist
snapped and he was instantly gone. He
almost flew after the fleeing sheep, I saw him again briefly once and then no
more.
I was screaming
and screaming for him and in utter dread, because he was chasing sheep and I so
desperately did not want to be that person; that
thoughtless irresponsible dog owner who allows their pet to terrorise and maim
and kill livestock. At work and
elsewhere, I have seen the misery, lasting harm and despair that this causes;
it is an utter, many-levelled nightmare, often made worse by the callous and
ignorant stupidity of the dog owner. I was sickeningly certain that Rory was
going to kill or maim something, and it could end with the farmer – rightly -
shooting him (or him being reported to the Police and having to be put down
when caught). After having initially
seen him chasing some sheep and then, a short while after, not Rory himself but
the sheep clearly running fast away from a pursuing dog (obviously him), very
soon after that I saw the same group of sheep just huddled together in a little
area beneath where I was standing, calm, clearly unharmed and no longer being
pursued. I could see no other livestock
running anywhere in the vicinity, and no trace of a wounded or killed animal. In fact, no sign of any animals anywhere,
apart from the now peaceful and huddled group of sheep, so I knew Rory was just
well and truly gone.
It was then
that I noticed that he’d taken the waist-strap along with him in his flight (when
it snapped, it must have become caught up with his lead as he fled - to which
was clipped a pack containing my MOBILE PHONE AND MY CAR
KEY.
Oh yes. I was
in the middle of north Dartmoor, miles from anywhere, and the dog had gone with
my car key and my phone and as the further horror of this dawned on me I felt
utterly sick. It was it was awful. I called
and called for Rory - I yelled for at least an hour in increasing desperation –
but there was no sign of him or the discarded waist-pack.
Eventually I realised
that I’d got to get myself back to the car, as soon as possible - because if I
get back to the isolated spot where people park their cars and there’s no other
cars there where I could try and summon help, I’m seriously screwed. I prayed that, at the very least, there might
be someone there I could ask for help. I
made my way back there, which took nearly another hour, and I saw three people
who looked like they had just come back from a walk. By this point I was almost
in hysterics, certainly very distressed, and I said “I am so sorry, but can you
please help me? I’ve lost my dog. He’s
gone and he’s taken my phone and car key with him.” They just laughed at me. They laughed. Which is not characteristic of people on the moor
– generally the people you meet are friendly and happy to say hello. Most especially in such a remote place as
this, a place where you have to make a real effort to be. Amid their laughter, they pointed out a
nearby vehicle and said “You want those lads; best ask them.” And as I walked to this vehicle, they laughed
at me all the more.
Not far from
the access point to the North moor lies the UK military’s Okehampton Battle Camp. In fact, the route that all cars use to
access the more remote parts of the North moor is the old military ring road,
kept in a state of semi-repair.
I had noticed
before that there was a big military exercise taking place on the moor, with
soldiers in camouflage crawling all over the place with blank weapons, firing
and shouting at each other in full battle-training. It turned out that they were training
Ukrainians for the ongoing war and four of the UK officers were in a vehicle
where the cars were parked, observing proceedings. I went up to the officers and said “I’m so
sorry, please could I ask for your help,”, explaining the situation and begging
their assistance. They were wonderful.
The officers immediately
said “Don’t worry - we’ve got officers all over the moor. We’ve got guys on the
other side of the hill here; they’re all over the place and we will help you.” (Karma also came a-calling for the initial
trio who had laughed at me. They were
parked on the military ring-road, where they shouldn’t have been. One of the
officers asked if they were with me and when I said no, he and a colleague
marched off to administer them an A-grade bollocking. Ha ha.)
Before I could
even finish expressing my heartfelt thanks, some of the officers immediately
started - and it was like a REAL military operation; I was mortified - going
over the moor in a sweeping motion, whilst summoning their colleagues in other
locations to do the same. I could see at
least eight of them on my side of the hill and knew that others elsewhere were
similarly mobilised. It was surreal - like
something that you might see on television - those police searches where they
are combing an area for a missing person or evidence – looking everywhere quickly
and meticulously for any sign or Rory or the missing pack. They moved so fast and so thoroughly,
covering the distance it had taken me an hour to traverse in what seemed like
minutes. I was so thankful to them.
The officer in
charge, as soon as I had explained my predicament, had got straight onto his walkie-talkie
radio to communicate with his colleagues. Now that I am on the other end of
this sorry episode, and knowing that it had a better outcome than at the time
seemed likely, I can see the tacit, or inadvertent humour in the situation
(certainly not at the time though). The
officer’s radio dialogue with his unseen colleagues elsewhere on the moor went as
follows:
Officer: “I’m sorry chaps, real world
situation here. We’ve got a civilian who’s just approached us; she’s lost her
dog…”
Radio: “schkkllkk…
Real world situation. Lost dog. Description. Over. schkkllkk
…”
Officer: “Staffie
cross French bulldog. Gunmetal grey. Wearing red harness with black straps,
trailing black lead. Over.”
Radio: “schkkllkk
…[repeated description]. Over. schkkllkk…”
Officer: “Additionally,
the dog was attached to pack. Was green with black straps…”
Radio: “schkkllkk…
green with black straps pack. Over. schkkllkk
…”
Officer: “No,
wait, there’s more. Inside the pack were
the civilian’s mobile phone and car key. Over.”
Radio: “schkkllkk
… … … schkkllkk … ****ing h*ll… schkkllkk
…”
He wasn’t wrong.
We waited by
the vehicle for quite a while, as officers swept the moor. All the while sat by my car, which I could
not get into. It was almost as if it was
sitting there mocking me.
Another officer
telephoned the RAC. They were useless –
they first denied all knowledge of me (I’ve been a paid-up member since 1998)
or my vehicle. Then, once they’d
identified me, could not help beyond saying that they’d texted a link to my
phone and “all” I needed to do was to follow the link and help would be on its
way. They were utterly unable to cope
with the concept of not having access to a mobile phone. When the officer testily explained to them (again)
that the phone was gone and unavailable he was met with incomprehension and
silence.
The insurance
company (Direct Line; I’m not afraid to name them) were no bloody good either.
They were unable to suggest anything that might help in the moment, beyond “isn’t
there anyone local who might be able to help you out?” and “we can email you
something but if you put in a claim, your premiums will go up…” Yes. Thanks for
that.
All the while I
was feeling sicker and sicker. Wondering
how the hell I was going to get out of this – and how I was going to have to go
home without Rory, never knowing what had happened to him and what harm and havoc
he had caused. I dreaded having to ring
my mum and tell her that he was gone.
The military officers
were so kind and reassuring. They had
not found Rory or the pack but, equally, they had not found any injured or
killed livestock, so that was some small reassurance. They stressed that, sadly they regularly saw
such things on the moor; they knew the signs generally present and the
all-too-obvious sad evidence, but in this case there was absolutely
nothing. No blood, carnage or mangled
remains, and they assured me that, had anything of that nature happened, they
would certainly have seen indications of it.
This brought a small measure of relief.
They then needed
to get back to their base. They did ask
of their superiors, but understandably I was not allowed to go to wait within
the battle camp for any further developments - but they did say that I could
sit in the guard room, so they took me down there by vehicle (that was heart-wrenching;
being driven down, away from my stricken car and from where I had last seen
Rory). Once there, they phoned the hotel and said “We’ve got your guest here,
can you arrange a taxi for her from the Okehampton military camp?” The hotel staff said that they would sort that
out, so there I sat for ages, still trying to summon help from the RAC or Direct
Line without success.
One of the
officers had said that, generally, dogs lost in the area eventually made their
own way to the military camp. It was the only thing around for miles, and when lost
dogs became hungry and tired, they could smell food and signs of human
habitation and arrived at the guard house of their own volition. Although this was reassuring to hear, my
hopes weren’t high. I really believed
that I would never see Rory again.
After at least
another hour (possibly more) had passed, the phone in the guard room rang. It
was a member of the public who said they’d found a dog - miles away on the
other side of the hill – loose and running about. The officer said “Oh! We think we’ve got the
owner here, bring him on down.” It was clear from the lady’s description that
it was the fugitive Rory, unharmed and without any evidence of having
killed/injured anything. She drove down
in a gold-coloured Volvo - with Rory sitting on her lap in the driver’s seat with
his head poking out of the window. Thank
all goodness. I thought I’d never see him again. I was so grateful; the lady
was glad to have been the means of reuniting us and said that it was her firm
believe that he had not been involved in the harassment of livestock. The officers concurred. Had he caused harm, the physical evidence on
him, on his harness and in his mouth would have been clear for all to see. I was doubly thankful for that.
So Rory was
back - but he was no longer attached to the waist-pack. I mean, I knew from the outset that it was
gone. There was that faint glimmer of hope that it MIGHT still have been entangled
in his lead – but in my heart I knew that it was long gone.
The one officer
in particular who had been helping me (he was very lovely in lots of ways; I
only found out his first name – Luke) he let me use his phone as much as I
needed to. He also took Rory and I back
up onto the moor to see if we would locate the pack one last time – he tried to
access a “Find my Phone” tracker (but could only find one that he’d have to pay
for and I refused to let him do that), then he tried ringing my phone, it rang
all right, but we couldn’t hear it. He
jogged all the way to the top of the tor and back around, while Rory and I
struggled around the lower slopes.
One of the
early and repeated questions from the military officers was “do you know
roughly/can you point out roughly the area where you were when you lost the dog?”
Not without a cruel sense of irony was I able to say “I can tell you exactly
where I was - down to the last inch practically.” Because it was bloody Waypoint
One on my GPS device, on which I had just spent a fortune and was using for the
very first time. I had been clutching it
in my hand throughout the whole ordeal.
So I knew exactly where to guide them – as well as the route we’d taken
to get there, including diversions, the length of time it had taken to get
there AND how high above sea-level it was…
But it didn’t help. Rory had been gone for hours; he could have gone
anywhere between there and Princetown so goodness knows where he and the waist-pack
had finally parted ways. Luke and I
searched the areas around waypoints one and two but of the pack there was no
sign. My hopes were not high though. The
area was rocky, boggy in places, with gorse and heather and the bracken was
above waist-height in parts. You could
have been just a foot away from the pack and walk right past it.
Luke was kind
and offered as much calm sense as he could in the situation, telling me that
the dog was back unharmed, everything else could be replaced, it would all be
alright. Of course, he was right.
Everything else COULD be replaced, and Rory was safely back and clearly
innocent of wildlife or livestock destruction (I wonder what he DID do all that
time? Probably found himself a shady
nook and had a jolly good kip, the lazy git).
In the beginning of the crisis, as I was trying to keep myself rational
and calm on the way back to the car, I was telling myself “this day will end.
This day will be over, and it will be alright.” Although I couldn’t see
how. Bad days DO end, and better ones
come after them. That was what I kept
telling myself as the horrors were unfolding in my mind.
Once back in
the guard room, Luke brought me a cup of water, and another cup for Rory. We
were both very grateful. He also brought
me a Snickers bar, god bless him, to cheer me up. Unfortunately, I’m allergic
to nuts so I had to say thank you very much and hide it in my pack when he wasn’t
looking. I managed to achieve that without anyone noticing.
After quite
some more time had passed, another officer eventually they phoned the hotel
again to say “Look, it’s been a while now - what’s the ETA on this taxi for
your guest?” Unhappily, the hotel chaps (again the lovely young men, but for
whom English is their second language) replied that they “weren’t able to get
any taxi firm to accept the job. We’ve been trying to ring Miss P----- to let
her know, but we haven’t been able to get a reply.” Arrrgh!
How is it
possible to exist these days without a phone?!
I was exhausted
after at least four hours of this, heaped upon the initial distress. Fortunately, Luke continued to let me have
free use of his phone. We looked up all the local taxi firms and I tried each
one. None of them answered – until the
sixth one, Acorn Taxis. After hearing about my situation, she said she could be
with me in half an hour and would take me all the way to my hotel near Plymouth
for £55. I was profusely thanking her
until I heard “oh, wait, hang on. Did you say you had a dog with you? I’m not
sure I – “
I almost broke
down. To be so near help and then to hear that it might be denied was nearly
more than I could bear. I began “oh, no, PLEASE, no-“ but then
the lady asked me to describe Rory and after the first few sentences she said
that it would be fine. It turned out
that a very large, hairy and slobbery dog had once unexpectedly accompanied a
booked ride and all but destroyed her car interior; she was fond of Staffies
and French Bulldogs and as long as he was seated on a towel, Rory was
welcome. I couldn’t have been more
thankful.
It turned out
that the taxi lady was an angel in more ways than one. After I had left the guard house expressing
my deepest gratitude to Luke and his wonderful colleagues, and was explaining
the full history of the afternoon whilst towels for Rory were laid on the back
seat of the taxi, she said that her husband worked on a vehicle recovery truck
and had a mate who did emergency car key replacement. She offered to telephone her husband and get
the number for me. The key man, James
(from keytomycar.co.uk, god bless them) was out on another job at the time, but
she kindly left a message for him to call me at the hotel, or via her if we
were still en route. We
formulated a plan that she would get me and Rory back to our hotel that
evening, hopefully key man could make a replacement key, which he would deliver
to taxi lady. Once done, Rory and I would get ourselves to Okehampton (ideally
the train station), where taxi lady would meet us and hand over the key and
then take us up onto the moor where the car would be waiting.
So, I had renewed
and thankful hope. I had resigned myself
to the fact that the phone and keys would not be recovered. I was having minor palpitations about all the
work contacts and data stored on my phone but, most especially, all the
photographs. Holidays, memories, almost
all of the offline photographs I had of Gisele-Stephanie were stored on that
phone – the thought of losing those was a real sadness. At least Rory was safe.
Back at the
hotel, the staff (Sunil and Jetain) were very pleased to see me looking unharmed,
but sorry for what had happened, and then I think the full horror of the
situation actually dawned on them and they were mortified at their unwitting part
in it, not having realised that the phone had gone, along with the dog and car
key, and the implications of their not having been able to summon a taxi and
not letting the army officers know but leaving a voicemail on my vanished phone
and innocently believing that they’d done enough. They could not have been kinder. It really wasn’t their fault. They let me use the hotel phone as much as I
needed. I was able to let my mum know
what had happened, but that Rory was safe and unharmed. And finally, after a number of attempts, I
was able to speak to key man.
Key man was aware
of the situation by the time I got through to him, having spoken to taxi
lady. He was kind and didn’t laugh at my
misfortune at all. He was calm, matter-of-fact
and reassuring. Despite the fact that he
lived fairly locally to the North of the moor, he didn’t know where the car was
located – it really was that remote - but fortunately his father-in-law was
staying with him and his father-in-law knew where it was. So they went out together that night and
successfully made the new key. He rang
me back at the hotel once it was done to reassure me (so that I could at least
get some sleep that night) and I promised to call him back first thing in the
morning to pay him.
I then began to
plan how I was going to get myself to Okehampton the following morning. Taxis from the hotel were known to be hard to
come by(!) but I thought I might at least be able to get one to Plymouth
station and thence get the train to Okehampton.
Alas, there’s no such thing as a direct train these days - I would have
had to get a train from Plymouth to Exeter and then Exeter to Okehampton – with
Rory in tow. But then I wondered how - even if I get to Okehampton - how am I
going to ring the taxi lady? Because there are no payphones anywhere anymore. That quandary was rendered irrelevant in any
case – because the bloody trains were on strike the next day. Joy was just being
heaped upon joys.
I decided I
would phone taxi lady in the morning and see if I could appeal to her to taxi
the key all the way to us in the hotel and then return with us to the car. The hotel staff were anxious to be sure that
I would have a taxi in the morning, and so wanted to book one for me there and
then in advance, but we agreed to wait until the morning and after I had spoken
to both key man and taxi lady again.
But cruel
circumstance had not finished with me quite yet. Rory had been safely installed
in the hotel room with his (ill-deserved) supper, and I went to return the
hotel phone to reception. There was
another guest in the hotel who had overheard my relation of the day’s events
and my phone calls with key man while he was in the hotel bar. He very kindly put details of my lost pack
and its precious contents on the local Facebook pages (the wonderful taxi lady
also put it on the Okehampton Facebook page for me, bless her). He also let me use
his phone to put it on some other Dartmoor pages that I frequent and I also
notified the National Park Authority in case a ranger came across it (the
Police didn’t want to know). Whilst
doing this, the lovely hotel chaps had been closing up the kitchen for the
night. Bless them both, they then brought
me a bowl of chicken curry that they had made themselves (proper, authentic
chicken curry with everything including all the bits and bobs and bones of the
chicken). As with the Snickers bar from
Luke earlier, the gods of gastronomy were laughing at me once again. I’m a vegetarian.
These dear
young men gave me the lovely curry that they’d made, after I’d had such a horrendous
time (and with no food). It was so very,
very kind of them. I couldn’t bear to
turn it away or seem rude. What could I
do?
I pretended to
eat it. That’s what I did. I put it all
in my mouth and chewed, professing delight at every lovely mouthful. And, to be fair, it was absolutely delicious.
I swallowed the tasty veg and mushrooms and the outstanding home-made sauce. But as soon as I was unobserved or a back was
turned, I took out the bits of unswallowed chicken and carefully concealed them
about my person, unobserved.
I was somewhat limited
as to places of concealment, as you may imagine. So each piece of chicken was quietly transferred
from my mouth to my hand and from thence to the only hiding place available: my
pants.
I take no pride
in the fact that I did this for the entirety of the meal undetected, in the
presence of the other guest in the bar (a more grateful and infinitely more honest
recipient of some curry) and my kind, generous and thoughtful friends from the
hotel. I felt unbearably guilty the
whole time.
Wracked full of
guilt, and my pants full of curried chicken, I then had to walk past everyone,
all of whom were cheerfully bidding me goodnight, expressing again their sorry for
the day’s misfortunes, trying to get across the lobby and up the stairs without
chicken-leakage or betraying the lumpen shapes about my lower regions which
would announce my heinous, traitorous, disrespectful secretions.
Once I was
safely back in the room, putting the chicken pieces of shame into Rory’s
gratefully-receptive maw, I believed that I had never felt quite so wretched in
my life.
So that was that
day.
The following
morning, at breakfast (with extra scrambled egg, mushroom and a little hash
brown on my plate, guilt, guilt guilt) I phoned key man and paid him the
£390 for the emergency replacement (computer-reprogrammed) key. Very happily for me, angel taxi lady kindly
said she will come all the way down to the hotel with the key, collect me and Rory,
and drive us back out to the moor where the car was and all for another £55,
which I felt was more than reasonable.
I cannot thank my
helpers highly enough. I can tell you that it was a sweet, sweet sound when got
out of the taxi, pressed the key button and the car went “peep peep” and
opened. Utter relief.
Before she
left, taxi lady asked if I was going to stay up in the location and look for
the waist pack. I seriously thought
about it – but on just looking at the hillside I knew it would do me no
good. I decided that I was not going to
torment myself by even trying to look for the pack.
At the hotel
receptionists’ suggestion that morning I had tried ringing the phone from the
hotel, so that I could leave a voicemail message, in case someone was able to
find and unlock it. It was still ringing but had not gone to voicemail – and I
suspected that the battery would soon run down as the phone also served as my
alarm clock and would, by now, have been going off without me there to silence
it.
I felt that the
sheep had probably got it by now - they are probably ringing Domino’s as we
speak – “Meeh -eeh-eeeh… can I have extra pepperoni on mine, please… meeh-eeeeh….
Garlic bread… meeh-eeeh-eeehhh….”
Another walker
preparing himself for his day on the moor overheard the conversation and asked
me about it once the taxi lady had left.
He expressed sincere sympathy and offered to help to look for the
pack. I was very grateful, but I knew
that we could look for days and never find it – if the army and all their
combined efforts yesterday could not locate it, the chances of us finding it were
extremely remote.
Blessing again
the assistance of taxi lady and key man, I started the car and drove back down
to the military camp guard house, just to say thank you again to the soldiers for
their help. I was so grateful to them, more than I could ever express. Luke sadly was not there, and the officer on
guard duty did not know who he was (I think they address each other chiefly by
surnames, and I didn’t know Luke’s). I
did leave a written note of thanks, along with my details for the lost property
in case anyone handed in the pack. The
civilian guard on duty remembered us from the previous day and said that he
would keep an eye on the various Facebook pages.
And, with that,
I was all set to head off elsewhere. But then I thought to myself “No! I’m bloody
well going to do this walk. It’s cost me
an absolute fortune to get everything out here in terms of new keys, GPS and
taxi fares. I have just spent another £55 just to get back here, so I am bloody
well going to do it.” I hate to be
defeated by anything and I was determined that this was not going to get the
better of me. I was going to stick two
fingers up to the events of yesterday and not let it have the satisfaction of
defeating me. I was going to show fate
what I thought of it by succeeding in doing the whole walk that I had planned
and set out to do, and claw back a little bit of victory for myself from the
whole sorry episode.
So we did it.
The whole walk and every single letterbox (waypoint) (it was the “Animal Tors”
charity letterbox walk in aid of Pancreatic Cancer UK; a lovely route and very
nice stamps, as it turned out). Rory was
slightly hobbling his way around at times, but my sympathy for him was limited. I felt that he was the architect of his own
misery and you’re going to finish this walk and like it (he actually did enjoy
himself in the end, though not the fact that he was now wearing two leads, one
clipped to his harness and literally tied to me and the other being an old lead
of Jasper’s that I clipped to his collar. I wasn’t going to be complacent again).
It was very
satisfying to complete the walk, feeling that I had secured victory over defeat,
and return to the car happy.
Less happily,
though still thankful for a better outcome than had at first seemed likely –
and VERY thankful that Rory and I were together again – for the rest of the
holiday I had to restrict where we went, in case I got myself in a tricky situation
because I now had no phone with which to summon help if I was in a predicament. Plus the fact that the phone was also my Sat
Nav (though I was still able to navigate using paper maps, never a wasted
skill).
We were,
however, still blessed with the new GPS device, and that promoted our enjoyment
of several other walks in more easily-accessible and less troublesome areas. We had some lovely times and walks in the
days remaining to us. Sadly I had no
means of photographing them, but they are committed to memory now and that will
have to do. My conscience still pricked
me about the unwitting litter I had left somewhere on the North moor, and I
grieved for the loss of all those photographs of sweet Gisele. But I was incredibly mindful of how very much
worse the situation could have been, and thankful for the outcome I had
received.
Rory Gamin de
Pycome returned to my side unharmed and innocent of malevolent wrongdoing or
carnage was a blessing for which I will always be thankful. It does beg the question of what on earth he
WAS doing all the time that he was gone.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m probably better-off not knowing. He was gone for hours, with no trace of him
or his doings; what was he up to? Actually,
I suspect that he found himself a nice secluded shady spot and had himself a good
sleep for a few hours. For a fit young
dog in his prime, he can be really quite remarkably idle.
On our last day
we went out on a lovely, gentle walk with beautiful letterbox stamps to find in
the popular Pew Tor area, where there is generally a highly worthy local
ice-cream van in the car park to reward ourselves on our return. Our final walk duly and happily completed; we
met some Australian tourists also enjoying the rich bounty on offer from Willy’s
Ices on the Moor. They stopped to admire
Rory (everyone does; as with Jasper and Gisele.
They were adored wherever we went, as now is Rory. I’m just incidental – Rory is Sooty and I am
very much the Matthew Corbett of the piece.
But no matter – he deserves to be loved, I would much rather they looked
at him than me). I told them what Rory
had done; they were laughing so much that one of them almost hurt himself. They ended up taking photographs of the dog so
that they could show their friends back in Australia - saying “this is what
this dog did! Look at him!” I got a
small piece of quiet revenge; they told me that they had just come from touring
Ireland and one of them had been kissing the Blarney Stone. I asked them if
they knew that the locals went down and pee-ed on it at night. But they laughed very heartily at that
too. In truth, they were lovely people,
and it was nice to talk with them. I was
glad that our tales of mishap had made them laugh. It’s nice if we can make
someone smile or make their day just that little bit better.
It was not
exactly the uneventful and battery-recharging holiday that I had hoped for. But it has at least been a tale (with a
thankfully better-than-expected outcome) which can make people smile. I have committed the whole thing to record
here, in case I forget any of the finer details. And also to remind me that, however, awful a
day I might be having – this one was worse, and we came through it. It was OK
in the end.
Of course, I
had to listen to Sh*t FM in the car all the way home, as my carefully curated play-list
of tracks was on my phone. And we had to
get back in time to go to the phone store to get a replacement. They, also, were kind sympathetic and
helpful. And a most happy coda to
the whole came when it transpired that all my phone data – including all the
photographs of Gisele-Stephanie – had been backed up to the Cloud all the way
up to the morning of the fateful incident and were easily restored to my new
phone. I’m still getting to grips with
the new device and its many and varied settings, but I am so, so thankful for
the backups. I will never be tardy about
employing them again. Alas, the photos
from the morning of “the incident” are non-recoverable (unless the old phone is
located, but I doubt that will ever happen), but I’m not sure I really want
those. The last photo I took was of Rory
at his first letterbox, gurning at the camera with the box in the background. That was taken approximately 45 seconds
before that day turned to merry hell and I am not sure I want a pictorial memento
of that.
None of this
has deterred us. We have already booked
our return to Dartmoor. Although old
Rory “Two Leads” Gamin de Pycombe will not be offered another opportunity for
solo adventuring. We keep smiling, and
very thankfully and gratefully so.
I suppose I
should offer the last word to Rory himself:
“Mamma refused to rub cream onto my sore and calloused paws. Unacceptable.”
Happy days!
This is Rory Gamin de Pyecombe, who came to live with me on 19 February. He's helping to mend the broken hearts that sweet Gisele left behind her.
His literary skills are still in progress, but he looks forward to sharing his adventures, of which I am sure there will be many.
Keep smiling, always. x
