Summer issue to print!

After two long days at the computer(s) in my barn outside Moretonhampstead, Emily and I are pleased to say that the summer issue is (almost) ready to go to print! It’s a time-consuming process: correcting text glitches, moving around photos and captions, checking photo acknowledgements, finalising ads and cover lines and so on. Over the weekend Emily will go through every page again before I have a final look and then it will be uploaded to the printers’ portal. Subscribers’ copies will be sent out around 26 May, and the bulk delivery will reach us that week for delivery to our 60 or so sales outlets around the moor.

In this issue we’ve got a broad range of articles, as usual: I’ve been out to Shilstone Rocks Stud near Widecombe to learn all about the registered Dartmoor Pony; Richard Horsham examines Dartmoor’s blanket bog in enormous detail; we have walks along the Two Moors Way, to Cranmere Pool (and with llamas!); Tavistock Golf Club celebrates its 125th birthday; Tim Jenkinson takes an in-depth look at the rocks of Hound Tor Coombe; and much, much more. There are interviews with ‘Tich’ Scott and Bill Murray, and with sculptor Peter Randall-Page from Drewsteignton, and Nick Baker looks at the underwater life of a Dartmoor stream. This issue’s beautiful cover and Contents page photos (see Contents spread below) have been supplied by Richard Fox of Bovey Tracey. And in this issue we have an amazing eight pages of News, including the story of the new part-time Post Office that has taken up residence in Throwleigh parish church.

Tomorrow I’m off to Princetown for the Dartmoor Local History Day: an annual gathering of representatives from local history groups, with talks from an excellent range of speakers. After that it’s down to Parke for the Dartmoor Pony Heritage Trust’s 10th birthday party… and then next week I shall be commissioning articles and planning the autumn issue!

Contents spread from DM119 summer 2015