Glad you are back safely Guy.
Weather/Flights have been looking shite for the last few days
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Negotiating an extra 2 days of leave: work starts again next Monday instead of this Thursday.
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About to hit the road and head to sunny Sidcup for yet another sodding funeral 
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So, today we laid to rest my friend of 41 years, Steve Tracey. I offer this rather specific information because (as was typical of Steve) today has been a learning experience!
I knew Steve had had a musical career - I knew that he basically lived off his royalty cheques - but by the time I met him, he had finished with music and had little inclination to talk about it, instead pursuing his lifelong love of natural history, and in particular the exact same very specific subset of fossils that also had me in their thrall.
I did discover that when a bit pissed (which was often!), he could be persuaded to play any of the dozens of bizarre-looking and highly-diverse instruments hanging on the walls of his lounge, he could tune them if required, and he could play all of them bloody well.
Among the many things I didn’t know:
- His name was actually Steve Fenwick.
- He was more than a decade older than I thought.
- He’d been in multiple different bands, chiefly in Africa and Lebanon.
- He was a really rather decent crooner, in the style of the day!
Here (still as Steve Fenwick) he both wrote the song and played rhythm guitar for what is claimed to be Zambia’s most popular beat band, ca. 1966-7:
And here he summons his inner Tony Christie ~1969, now as Steve Tracey:
There is so much more - he sang, played, wrote, engineered, produced, provided backing and did session work for some household names, all before abruptly packing it all in ~1979 to pursue his lifelong love of natural history.
He studied for and won his PhD in Earth Sciences in his mid 60s, and ended-up as editor for the International Congress of Zoological Nomenclature, based at the NHM in London, a role he loved with a passion and which he continued long after retirement age.
He was a sparklingly witty, charismatic, funny, loveable, provocative and infuriatingly modest guy. He had the kind of twinkle that could melt any woman’s heart - and he could undo a bra one-handed so fast you could barely see it happen, as he once demonstrated on my FWB, Deb, in a crowded pub one drunken evening. She still boasts about it… 
RIP Old lad, it was a pleasure and a true privilege to have been your friend.
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Sounds like a life thoroughly well lived, and I cannot think of higher praise than that.
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Wow I wish I was one tenth as interesting as him!
I’d settle for 1/20 
I livened up a trip to the shops with a return leg via the coast road, washing the Landy for free and zero effort, which was nice.
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Just got to rinse all the salt off now!
Easier to stick a cd in the player and have done with it 
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A cool but dry day yesterday so we took a walk down the Walkham valley mainly because I wanted to take a closer look at Hucken Tor which is granite stacks in amongst gnarly woodland & which apparently has caves.
We parked by the Dartmoor Inn at Merrivale which was quiet as we set off but busy by mid afternoon.
Setting out, Vixen Tor is on the other side of the valley.
I liked this bit of freeform stonewalling
After passing by/through a couple of farmyards the track heads into woodland.
and crosses the first of several brooks
getting greener
Vixen Tor again off to the West
Exploring Hucken Tor
The track turned into a lane & made its way down to cross the river at Ward bridge. Climbing out up the other side we got a view of our start point (& destination) white building in the far distance.
a nice tiny clapper bridge
The dog by a piece of dressed but unused stone next to Heckwood Tor.
Coming down the slope towards Vixen Tor, a 100 ft tall granite stack whose owner has declared it off limits to walkers.
We were lucky with the weather yesterday. It began raining by the time we got home. A nice easy route though.
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Is this some kind of sky burial!? 
“Yes, grandad’s a kite now…”
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What goes up …
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Ha! Zoom in and you’ll see the pilot. It’s a bit cold up there not moving much, so they sit in sleeping-bag-type things. Sure that @rmsshipbroker can explain much better
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Bradwell?
Same shit I do but a Ferrari to my Ford gear.
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Yeah, but a leaf and some dental floss is all it takes to get you airborne.
True, I have to be careful getting my hankie out on a windy day…
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