Meteors, Bats and Devon's most overpriced Rabbit Pie?

I haven't actually done ANY formal research into the price of Rabbit pie in and around Devon - or, more specifically, Dartmoor. However, I'm willing to bet that £11.50 for Rabbit Pie, Chips and Veg is over the odds. Aptly named "warreners pie" at The Warren House Inn, you don't need much imagination to assume that this home made pie has little in the way of overheads. The mark up must be huge. Word to the wise - if you are heading out that way for lunch then stick with the lovely £7.50 ploughmans. I'm not really meant to be reviewing the pub. It's a fine pub. Check it out for yourself. The views are fantastic - when it's clear - and it's geared up for the tourist who loves a good ghostly story of the Devil and his card playing ways. Not to mention the magic of an everlasting peat fire...

I said this *wasn't* a review. We didn't even go. That is the point.

Last weekend it was Mr Me's Thirtieth birthday. Each year his birthday coincides with the Perseid Meteor shower and Mr Me is a geek. A real geek. The genuine article. Not a geek a la mode. One untouched by the charm of Prof Brian Cox and his beautiful hair and playful eyes.

Wonderfully wistful

Sorry, distracted.

YES. It was Mr Me's birthday. He has more beautiful eyes than even Brian Cox AND he is my own personal geek. I got him some awesome gifts including a rather nice pair of binoculars to watch said meteor shower. I planned it all down the last detail. It was going to amazingly romantic. A tent, the open moor, fantastic skies, malbec, pie - we wouldn't eat overpriced Rabbit Pie but instead munch on these:

Perfectly priced pie

There was even salami, chorizo, tiger bread and apple juice for the most middle class of picnic breakfasts. I know Dartmoor. It's in my blood. I know it, I love it and I respect it. Driving through the Wray valley the rain came in. I reassured Mr Me that it was thin mizzly rain and would be low cloud-y sort of rain. Up high it would be clear. Up we went. And it was clear-er. It wasn't raining at least. But from Cosdon Beacon way North the storm clouds were looming. In fact, the only clear sky was back down towards Hound Tor.

Determined NOT to let the trip be a complete waste of time I said a little prayer to Mother Earth to let the skies be clear. She responded with the echoes of thunder. Not before we were able to sit out near Hound Tor and have a few sips of wine and our pies though:

Time for a pie before the rain...

Pieminister clearly know pie. I don't know if the taste was enhanced by the fresh air, the wine or the good company but it was a fine supper. In spite of the clouds.

Embarrassingly, only hours after packing the car we were unpacking and taking the camping chairs to sit on the patio. "We'll still see some meteors, it's clear here." Ever the optimist. For an hour we sat there with me pretending very hard that it was open moorland and not the back garden. It should have been an evening with delighted cries of "oooh, there's one" as the dusty debris burnt up on collision with our atmosphere. Instead the evening was punctuated with "bat!" every time another bat swooped over the garden. This was soon followed up with "bat... lightning... bat... bat... lightning... THUNDER". And a move to have an early night while the massive thunderstorm raged from coast to moor and back again.

The Perseid Meteor shower went unseen. Displays of great shooting light across the sky was reserved only for the tops of angry clouds. Bats came down to feast on the midges that had earlier been feasting on me. And we ate cured meat under a sleeping bag on the patio. We can see shooting stars next year perhaps but for Mr Me's 31st I don't think it will hold the same sense of romance...