Nicki Williams is a content editor and blogger for Gear-zone.co.uk and has spent many a day hiking on the Dartmoor trails. Here he explains more about this awesome annual event.

Each year, schools, colleges, scout groups and Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme participants head for Dartmoor to take on the 26 different routes and take part over three different distances to meet the Ten Tors challenge.

From the first expedition in 1960, the Ten Tors is now so popular that numbers each year are limited to 2,400 individuals, made up of 400 teams of four to six.

Image: Legendary Dartmoor

The British Army also uses the famous landscape as a training ground for large-scale logistics exercises, and since 1977 the Jubilee Challenge, named in honour of Queen Elizabeth’s 25 years on the throne, has provided a shorter course of up to 15 miles for those with learning difficulties or physical disability.

The Ten Tors is not a race – although teams invariably compete to see who can finish first – but more a test of stamina, navigation and survival skills.

The weather can play a huge part in proceedings – Dartmoor is renowned for varying conditions which can change in a heartbeat. In 1996, the event was struck by heavy snow storms; two years later, temperatures reached nearly 80°F.

Each team must carry their own food (pasties are not obligatory but highly recommended), clothing, tents and sleeping equipment, cooking stove and energy rations, collect their own drinking water from the moor and treat it with purification tablets, and have a designated team leader who is responsible for ensuring the official routecard is stamped at every checkpoint.

For 14 – 15 year olds, there are 12 bronze routes of 56 kilometres, for those aged 16 – 17 the ten silver routes involve 72 kilometres, and for those going for gold there are four routes of 89 kilometres aimed at 18 -19 year olds.

Those with a bronze medal in their sights must camp at one of the manned tors en route; silver and gold participants can camp anywhere on the moor.

see more http://lbicheeseday.tweetwally.com/ #LBiCheeseDay

Winner Godminster submitted by Nicola @FacetiousRemark

The diversity of cultures and their cooking to be found on the continent has resulted in a plethora of national dishes and cuisines to tickle a traveller’s fancy, many of which can be enjoyed as street food. Eating what the locals eat is a great way to immerse yourself in a history that is more than just architecture and museum.

Here are some must visit destinations and their local dishes to tempt those tastebuds! Wot no pasties

Currywurst; Germany

This fast food dish of German origin is a great winter warmer consisting of hot, fried, sliced pork sausage (Wurst) seasoned with curry sauce, popular with the young or old, rich or poor! Commonly sold on stands, in takeaway shops, diners and ‘greasy spoons’, it is often served with French fries or bread rolls and may come with or without the skin. It is a simple and tasty meaty street dish enjoyed all across Germany. In fact, the Germans love it so much there is even an interactive Currywurst Museum in Berlin!

Crepes; France

No trip to France would be complete without savouring one of their famous crepes, which take the form of a wafer thin pancake. With the choice of fillings often seeming limitless and varying from the sweet to the savoury, how can you resist! Whether you choose a filling of cheese, ham or egg or, for those with a sweet tooth, maple syrup or Nutella with banana, crepes are fantastic at any time of the day. The best vendors are those that
make them fresh in front of you, ladling the batter onto the sizzling stove and letting the aromas fill the air – truly tantalising – more so at this time of the year.

Lángos; Hungary

Considered by many as the most traditional street food of Hungary, this is a deep-fried flatbread, rubbed with garlic butter and commonly eaten topped with sour cream, grated cheese, ham or sausages. It is regarded as an absolute speciality of this east European nation. Have it for lunch, as a snack or after a night out – perfect any time of day to quell a rumbling stomach! Head to the Fény utca food market for some of the best.

‘Würstelstand; Austria

A traditional and popular Austrian fast food is without a doubt the sausage. There are “Würstlstands” selling hot dogs and hot sausages in all shapes and sizes wherever you go. These stands are great for a snack or a bite to eat when on the move! Try the Käsekrainer sausage which has melted cheese inside, a lip-smacking must if visiting Austria!

Simit; Turkey

Whilst kebabs are very famous as street food in Turkey, so too are simits! Ask a Turk away from home about the foods they miss the most, simit is very likely to be one of them. This circular bagel-type bread is topped with sesame seeds and is a great snack to be eaten whenever you fancy. Whether you have one by itself, with cheese, jam or even tomatoes, enjoy every minute of this snack – for a more authentic cultural experience,
have it with a Turkish coffee or tea. Simit carts are everywhere on the streets, so you have no excuse not to try one!

Trdelnik; Czech Republic

These cylindrical pastries are absolutely delicious and, understandably, a very popular Czech street food. Commonly sold hot and dusted with cinnamon, sugar and nuts, similar to the American pretzel (of which snacks like this are often considered a traditional forerunner), they are hard to resist and will more than satisfy that sweet tooth for a quick burst of energy whilst sightseeing! Enjoy watching the process of these little
pastries being made from scratch and being cooked over an open flame on metal sticks!

Many thanks to Henri at Europe & Beyond for these mouth-watering suggestions.

Gourmet salts contain almost 100 per cent sodium chloride, just like average table salt, meaning that they are likely to have exactly the same effect on your blood pressure and health.

Claims that rock and sea salts are “natural” and “contain minerals” are misleading and should be ignored, according to the report, which has been published by scientists leading a campaign to reduce the amount of salt consumed in the UK, backed by Which?, the consumers’ association.

A survey of Which? members suggested that almost 50 per cent of consumers thought that it was worth paying more for gourmet salt. About 25 per cent thought gourmet salts were healthier, while 39 per cent believed they were more natural.

Sue Davies, chief policy adviser at Which?, said: “Many of us are trying to reduce the amount of salt in our diet but our research shows people are needlessly spending more money on ‘premium’ salt because they often believe it is healthier than traditional table salt.”

Gourmet salts contain almost 100 per cent sodium chloride, just like average table salt, meaning that they are likely to have exactly the same effect on your blood pressure and health. One leading campaigner said that the large crystals favoured by gourmet salt manufacturers were possibly more damaging because they took longer to dissolve, and taste less salty as a result.

“It is disgraceful that chefs still encourage people to use so much sea and rock salt,” said a spkesman at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine.  He added  that measures had been taken to warn of the dangers of salt and health, with consumption in Britain falling by 10 per cent from 2005 to 2008. There has also been an increase in demand for LoSalt, which has 66 per cent less sodium.

Nutritionalists and healthcare professionals are  angry at claims made on packaging to encourage consumers to pay high prices. “They should not be allowed to get away with it!”

Among the offenders identified by the report was the Cornish Sea Salt Co. It claims to retain “over 60 naturally occurring trace elements and minerals essential for wellbeing”. It typically costs 75p per 100g, compared with just 8p for Saxa table salt. The most expensive salt in the study was fine Himalayan Crystal Salt, with a 1kg bag costing £13.46, or £1.35 per 100g. It claims to be “a salt that’s good for you . . . that even your doctor will like”.

Your GP is much more likely to be happier if you were to invest the money saved by not buying gourmet salt on a good quality blood pressure monitor which you can use regularly at home to keep a record on your blood pressure – one of the leading causes of heart disease and stroke.

A nutritionist specialising in studying the effects of salt and health said: “Most of the salt we eat, about 75 per cent, is hidden in food we buy.”

Cornish Sea Salt Co declined to issue a statement but pointed to articles that highlighted the health benefits of unrefined sea salt over table salt.

They were the sheep that passed in the night. A 1,500-strong flock has been spirited away in the dark from fields in Lincolnshire in what is believed to be the biggest case of rustling in Britain in modern times.

The theft at Stenigot near Louth, which fleeced the farmer of an estimated £100,000, is the latest in a spate of crimes driven by the rising price of lamb.

The level of organisation needed to carry out last weekend’s operation has surprised insurers and police.

“It would have involved sheepdogs, up to five articulated lorries and three men with each truck,” said a spokesman for NFU Mutual, the insurance company. “There would have been a lot of whistling and calling to the dogs. It is a remarkable achievement.”

He added that even in broad daylight experienced shepherds would find it hard to move so many animals in less than three hours.

The company estimates the cost of sheep rustling has risen more than fivefold in the past year. It says thefts of 100 to 200 animals have now become common and has received 142 claims for rustling in the first six months of this year, compared with 156 for the whole of 2010.

There is money to be made from lamb. The cost of 1kg (2.2lb) of British chops has gone up almost 40% in three years, from an average of 1,039p in July 2008 to 1,424p in July this year.

The price rises date originally from the foot-and-mouth crisis of 2001 when the number of sheep decreased sharply. More recently, falling farm profits and two harsh winters, leading to poor pastures, have reduced numbers further, while the weak pound has encouraged farmers to sell them abroad.

Recent thefts, reminiscent of those encountered by Wallace and Gromit in A Close Shave, include 300 sheep taken from a farm near Hungerford, Berkshire, 200 from a flock on Dartmoor in Devon and a similar number from Cockburnspath, Berwickshire — as well as 271 at Ramsbottom, Lancashire.

Previously, the biggest livestock theft in recent years was in 2009 when 500 piglets were taken from a farm in Staffordshire. Ducks and bees have also been singled out.

Sheep rustling has attracted skilled criminals in the past. The 18th-century highwayman Dick Turpin began his career stealing them for his butcher’s shop in Essex.

Modern thieves, as well as being well organised with fleets of transporters and a network of helpers to process the animals, are adept at pulling the wool over the eyes of police and other investigators.

Farmers are required to tag and document each animal, suggesting thieves may be falsifying records or be in league with slaughterhouses willing to kill the animals illicitly. Some may also end up in the fields of dishonest farmers who “launder” their identities.

Organised rural crime is a growing menace, although it is more common with machinery than livestock. “We’ve just recovered a Land Rover that was stolen from a farmer in Warwickshire as he went to unlock a gate,” said Chris Ruff, a detective with the vehicle crime intelligence service of the Association of Chief Police Officers. “It ended up in South Africa.” The service also recovered nine tractors from Poland.

There were 507,906 crimes in the countryside between January and June, compared with 195,907 over the previous six months, according to research commissioned by NFU Mutual.

It believes the spike in rural crime is in part driven by rising prices for sheep meat and materials such as scrap metals and diesel fuel — and peaks each April.

Almost five million people have been affected as torrential rain submerged more than 20,000 villages.

One can hardly find a dry place in the flood-hit areas

President Asif Ali Zardari asked for the help of the UN and other international organisations over the weekend as further heavy rains were forecast for the coming days. Sindh was among the worst hit region in last year’s floods in Pakistan, which killed about 2,000 people and made 11 million homeless.

The UN, which has described the situation as critical, is carrying out an urgent assessment. Aid organisations warned in July that Pakistan was unprepared for a repeat of flooding with hundreds of thousands still in camps a year after the country’s worst-ever natural disaster.

Witnesses said that the situation appeared to be worse than last year. Amar Guriro, an environmentalist and journalist, said: “One can hardly find a dry place in the flood-hit areas. I found hundreds of the corpses of dead people, goats, buffaloes, cows, donkeys and other animals.”

More than 2,500 relief camps have already been established in the province giving shelter to more than 225,000 people, officials claim. They admit, however, that since all the main roads leading to the affected area are under water it is difficult for supplies to get through. Mr Guiriro said he saw no evidence that food, shelter and medical supplies were reaching those worst affected.

In a statement the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said: “The situation for those impacted by recent monsoons and subsequent floods is critical, with thousands of people in need of life-saving assistance due to the lack of food and safe drinking water and the loss of livelihoods and homes.”

The UN children’s agency said up to 2.5 million children in southern Pakistan had been affected by the monsoon floods

As with a traditional superhero, it helped that Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall had such a straightforward moral message; one that he kicked off six months ago in his first Fish Fight. “Things are not just bad, they’re mad,” he said with comic-book simplicity as he reminded us of practices such as “discards”, whereby fish caught that exceed quotas, are too young or too unpopular are simply chucked, dead, back in the sea. To the obscenely wasteful tune of more than a million tonnes per year.

It also helped enormously that, unlike a traditional superhero, Hugh created a gimmick-free zone, a dressed-down approach to revolutionary change with weapons no more controversial than an iPhone app, showing viewers how to cook gurnard instead of cod. Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall neither resorted to dressing up as a mackerel nor weeping salty tears as he pushed for progress (the brief presence of Jamie Oliver reminded us that, in other hands, both would have been viable campaigning methods).

Instead he had started a Mexican wave through the good, old-fashioned means of getting people to write to their MP; one that, backed with camera-power, had led to the funding of a government study and an emergency debate on discards. How gracefully, understatedly Hugh knew how to use the telly. The last large tuna supplier on his hit list converted to friendlier fishing methods not after any guerrilla action but after a one-line e-mail sent to the head honcho. Hugh’s simple PS: “I am being filmed sending this to you so an early reply would be good.”

Of course, the camera wasn’t exclusively a force for good. How daft did the MP Zac Goldsmith look — he who had catalysed the emergency debate — when he almost missed it. Instead of moving to the chamber he was still busy in the lobby, flirting with HF-W’s lens. And note Hugh’s careful phrasing as he took the fight to the EU: “Every MEP in Brussels wants to be seen to be supporting the Fish Fight”. “Seen to” indeed: a comedy rota of MEPs scrabbled to be in-shot with HF-W, some choreographing photo opportunities so explicitly that they even told the chef how to position his hands. As we left Hugh and his remarkable leaps forward, he noted that he would have to keep an eye on this seat of power, to make sure the EU reforms he had pushed for “actually happen”. Implicit in these parting words seemed to be: of all the species we had met on Fish Fight, the slipperiest perhaps is the politician.

New home building in Bovey Tracey at Monterey Park

On the site of the Cardew Pottery in Bovey Tracey, Taylor Wimpey have begun this development of new homes in Devon.

New homes are being built in Bovey Tracey at Monterey Park situated at the end of the Bovey Straights. There will be a range of 2, 3, 4 and 5 bedroom homes for sale.

These new homes will offer a convenient place to live in on the edge of Dartmoor in Devon – home owners will benefit from a level easy walk into Bovey Tracey where there are many facilities and amenities.

The Market Town of Newton Abbot is only four miles away and the A38 provides commuters with a quick, easy road access to Exeter and Plymouth.

First Time Buyer Mortgages

Hopefully there will be help for first-time buyers through a variety of mortgages for one of the selection of  apartments and 2,3,4 & 5 bedroom new houses being built in Bovey Tracey.




Following the 2011 budget statement to help first time buyers get a mortgage,  a £250 million scheme was launched to help first-time buyers who want to buy a new-build property but can’t afford the high deposits.

Under the First Buy Scheme, the government and the housebuilders will jointly provide a 20 per cent loan to top up first-time buyers’ own deposit of 5 per cent. This will allow people to take out a mortgage for 75 per cent of the property.

Loans will be free of charge for the first five years and repaid when the property is resold. The funds will then be recycled to fund more homes for the scheme.

The First Buy Scheme should help 10,000 families to get onto the housing ladder, with the first homes expected to be available from September 2011,  in time to help those looking to buy a new house on the Monterey Park development in Bovey Tracey.

To fnd out more about help for first time buyers visit http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Nl1/Newsroom/Budget/Budget2011/DG_WP195617

Margaret wrote:

Well this has certainly made interesting reading. I have laughed so much at some of the stories but think it may be nervous laughter as I have two buckets of the stuff sitting in my garage! I have never attempted to make my own wine, beer or indeed anything like this before so don’t quite know what to expect. I will be bottling it tomorrow into plastic screw top bottles which previously had fizzy water in them, compliments of Tesco. I am wondering what to expect from the bottles having read some of the hilarious comments on here. Should I prepare for the worst? dress in combat gear, goggles, hard hat and wear asbestos gloves? Perhaps I could hire a suit of armour from somewhere, better to be safe than sorry! I will keep it in the garage I think, safely covered in a duvet and a tarpaulin. Only hope I like the stuff after all of this!

Hedgerows are festooned with elderflower in full bloom right now so once again I urge you to go pick a few heads (ideally on a warm still sunny day) and make your own delightful drinks – just remember to leave some flowers to mature into elderberries for the wine makers and of course our feathered friends.

Cheers