Happy day in a bleak place

Birthday weekend and so happy. Makes a change from recently gloomy posts this dark, wet, mud caked and vile winter. Perhaps is because OFT is away. My shoes are caked in red, west country mud at all times as the rain persists and grows ever more typhoon-like but the snowdrops are up on the river bank. First sign of hope. Also actually heard a buzzard, which will be the soundtrack to our summer, the other day.On Dartmoor today at Princetown. On a Navigation Course with ex-marine type. The weather is vile, horizontal rain strong winds practically blowing my water proof hat off, gloves, waterproof trousers needed, wind ripping the laminated OS maps out of the walkers hands. “If your map blows away, don’t go after it!” cautions our Leader who looks remarkably like actor David Tennant under his beanie” That is how people topple into ravines and over cliffs let the map go” He is charming and knowledgeable and has unlocked the enduring msyteries of the OS map Parish boundaries, Boundary stones. Remnant bridges. Manmade quarries. (Symbol on map like a thermometer) Stone walls (straight, black lines), embankments aside disused railway tracks and bridges over streams. We huddle round him in the bitter cold oir compasses swinging wildly from our necks on red strings. I am hampered by having to put on reading glasses to see anything on the ma0 at all. Glasses on glasses off. They too almost snatched by wind and sent skittering along the path. Think I shall have to invest in a Wodehousian monocle suspended from the neck to put up and down to my good eye. I however am not cold. I am for once wearing the right clothes. A mixture of technical tops, snowboarding trousers, new boots, a size bigger than normal, I have bought this week but spent the time wearing in and a special cycling top that keeps wind out,heat in. Stupendous. I am in the bitter cold and wind but warm. Loving the sound of the rushing wind through the forestry commission planted pine copses. Seeing the native ponies huddled against the forest edge out of the wind. The sheep. The babbling brooks, the bogs. I am with eldest child and learning about compass bearings. Onward and upward and head down into the wind…