#westcountry

[ipadnotesdotcom]

frog&scorpion fable. ipad notes app. uncropped below cut.

[splitcane]

A cane rod on a Westcountry river.

[djohnhopper]

The nakedness of winter. For more photography featuring the natural landscape of Cornwall, just follow the link: https://johnhopperphotography.blogspot.com/

[valiantdust]

I am too angry to sleep so I may as well post about this.

Alexander Darwall is a hedge fund manager who owns 4000 acres of Dartmoor. He has contested the right of the public to camp on his land. And he has won.

This has been portrayed in the media as a loss of the 'right to roam'. This is a stupid way to phrase it. We never had the right to roam. We have never had the right to wander and live on the land. The Romani people and travelling communities whose way of life is criminalised know this - but of course there isn't so much of a mention of the 'right to roam' until white middle class people think their children's dofe expedition might be threatened.

Anyway, I digress. Despite my badly-worded cynicism, this is a loss, and I am furious.

I am local. I have always lived in Devon, between the two moors. My dad knows the westcountry like the back of his hand. He and I could cross the county with our eyes closed. The tors and rivers and moorland raised me as much as he or my mum did.

And still, neither of us would claim Dartmoor as our own. Because it is not our land to claim.

But, as is the insurmountable self-centredness and inconceivably egotistical nature of the rich, Alexander Darwall visits the westcountry a couple times (as all rich people do, to recline in their seaside holiday cottage for the two weeks of the year that the ghost town they've driven all local people out of is actually populated, by other posh pricks, only to fuck off again and leave behind poverty and a decimated housing market), and decides that the local people can't be trusted with such beautiful land, and thinks he deserves to own it. And manage it.

Because of course the local peasants couldn't know anything about conservation. We don't have a connection to this land, oh no, nothing as strong as the connection between a rich man and the estate he can shoot pheasants on.

It makes my blood boil. The evil of it, the condescension. People like Alexander Darwell know nothing about the moor. It's not just about walking on it a few times: when you're local, you know it. You've seen it in all of its forms, all months and all seasons, you've seen it at its most beautiful and most ugly, you've endured its cold to stare at the stars, you know its history and you've followed its standing stones, walked silently and respectfully past its tombs and barrows, you've replanted trees and held the earth in your hands, you've counted the deer bolving, you've built the structures that will rewet the moorland and return its life, you've sampled the soil from the bottom of trenches and carefully replaced every layer to disturb it as little as possible, and you've sweated and ached to see all of these things and give all of this to the moor.

And still, the land is not yours to own! You can do all of this - I have done all of this - and still the land is not yours, and it is not mine.

And you can do none of this, and you should still have a right to access it. That is the point of our conservation efforts.

Conservation is the old men and women who I've planted trees with, the archaeologists I've uncovered my county's history with, my dad and his colleagues working on projects to protect the moor and the climate that is harmed by the loss of carbon-rich peat.

Conservation is not a hedge fund manager privatising the land for profit. It is not the mindless, evil promise of capital, that compels Alexander Darwall to build fences around Dartmoor and lock up his land. His land. I feel sick typing it.

Because ultimately, this was done for profit. There is contempt in it - Darwall has no respect for local people who aren't far-right politicians he can buy - but the main motivation is money. The national park will now give him money, money which should be spent on conservation projects but is now going into an evil millionaire's pocket, and the rich cunts who can't wait to butcher the pheasants and deer that should be existing wild, in naturally-sized populations, will give him money to shoot and hunt on his land and leave the carcasses there to rot.

I am angry. I am so, so angry.

I have every intent to camp on Darwall's land. I will break his locks and tear down his fences, and every local who can should do the same.

Dartmoor is no one's. But if it must belong to someone, it should belong to us, and not to him.

[ultralowoxygen]

Lifeguards by peterphotographic Via Flickr: Olympus OM2n / Zuiko 28mm f3.5 / Fujicolor Superia X-tra 400 This OM2n evidently has an intermittent light leak - I quite like the subtle effect here Tregonhawke, Whitsand Bay, Cornwall, UK

[tonydaddingham]

headcanon: Crowley invented the famous cheese rolling event where someone chucks a wheel of Gloucester down a hill and everybody flings themselves after it and it results in multiple severe injuries.

COOPER'S HILL MY BELOVED 💕 (my father is from gloucestershire and the attending of/participating in the cooper's hill cheese roll is frankly a rite of westcountry passage. kinda. depends on if you count gloucs as westcountry)

now look, completely agree - and i could see crowley absolutely doing that to be a nuisance, as is his right. but for me? that's aziraphale choosing to celebrate whit monday with a boujee lil picnic. but alas! he accidentally dropped a heavy-ass round of double gloucester cheese (he rather overestimated how much he'd need and instead brought the whole cow) and it rolled off down the hill. now, of course, he'd never do anything so uncouth as to run/tumble after it himself, but some passing locals very gallantly leaped after it to return it to the nice, comely angel wringing his hands over his lost lunch. when the brave, brave warrior who managed to catch it first returned it to him, he instead gifted it as a token of his gratitude, and carried on his merry way. purely accidental that this should henceforth become a tradition/festival.

the fact that it has since resulted in multiple injuries is absolutely not his fault, of course, but crowley found out about it all a century or so later and laughed so much it nearly made him sick.

tar barrels, however? in ottery st mary? now that is one of crowley's:

[aagciii]

A friend just sent this to me. One of the coolest posters I have ever seen... Show the Westcountry Baseball League & the Exeter Spitfires Baseball Club some love & give them a like...

[dotsayers]

watching the sister boniface christmas special with great joy

[mimble-sparklepudding]

I heard that Mimble puts the cream on his scone before the jam!

He certainly does. Doing otherwise is a filthy Nymian habit unbecoming of a Gentleman.

(Scone politics is a serious business, at least on the better side of the Tamar)

[skylordhorus]

new shirt!!

[j-august]

As Reginald Scot sagely observed, the place left empty by the saints of the medieval Church was filled by the wise women of the Tudor countryside. Devout Catholics could pray to St Vincent or St Anthony of Padua for the recovery of goods which had been lost or stolen; the Protestants had only the cunning man. At the end of the sixteenth century 'the more ignorant sort' were regretfully observed by Perkins to be better acquainted with charms and spells than with the word of God.

Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic

[ipadnotesdotcom]

immigrants. ipads notes app. uncropped + bg without characters under cut.

[tonydaddingham]

*deep inhale* i will defend brother francis until my last breath, he just wants to make friends with the lil bugs and teach you about love and respect, hes the best blue peter presenter they never had

i will not support brother francis slander on my page. he's a special little guy

[djohnhopper]

Welcome to Spring... officially. Though it's unofficially been going on for a while now. Personal photography featuring the natural world of Cornwall: https://johnhopperphotography.blogspot.com/

[ultralowoxygen]

Unemployed Lifeguard by peterphotographic Via Flickr: Olympus OM2n / Zuiko 28mm f3.5 / Fujicolor Superia X-tra 400 Tregonhawke, Whitsand Bay, Cornwall, UK

[lesbiansforboromir]

Tom Bombadil was just as superfluous and unnecessary as I expected but I have to say the accent was just a little worse than I predicted and physically hurt me a lot more than I anticipated, he really couldnt hit those 'a's right.

And more seriously, his whole conciet for being there was JUST as aggravatingly-put as I expected. 'This all used to be green, now it is just a desert' Tom says as he gestures at a perfectly flourishing desert ecosystem with hundreds of plant species in every single shot, as if that's some tragedy.

The racist elements of the Stranger's plotline are not only getting worse but are bleeding into other aspects of the show. The only non-english accents we hear are from evil moth cultists worshipping a dark wizard and skull-mask wearing lepers(?) who just hit people for no good reason. The Stoors have lived in Rhun for centuries apparently, why do they have westcountry accents? It's absolutely bizarre!

And now we've seen the barrow wights, who apparently were laid to rest by some long gone civilisation, and they are in... Keffiyahs? RoP I would be delighted for you to place an arabic-inspired culture in the middle of Eriador, but that is not what you have done you have just orientalised these evil ghosts.

In general there is just no effort whatsoever to actually explain human society in middle earth currently, the only people we've seen are all just brown tinted hollywood peasent-core. In comparison to the costuming for elves and Numenoreans it's kind of dire, and Pelargir is apparently just a tiny collection of huts in the middle of ruined Numenorean architecture. Like... ow, firstly, that's the city from my blorbos, but more to the point if all human 'cities' are currently so 'primitive' then where the HELL was that ship Sauron took with the refugees drydocked?? That was like a pirate-golden-age schooner or something, how the hell was it maintained? Who sails it? Who built it, it's not a numenorean design- WHAT is going on with men in middle earth right now!! I am disappointed and frustrated!

I did like the big worm though. Couldn't get enough of that big mud bobbit worm.