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This weekend was the 80th birthday celebration for my paternal grandfather - 26 people, two hotels, a bus, no mobile phones, and yours truly the designated photographer (and taxi driver). I shall come to the two hotels part in a bit.

Mum and Dad arrived Friday night at my place, as we intended to carpool down to Devon on Saturday morning. So far, so good. We departed Saturday morning around 8 a.m., with the intent of going down the M5. This intent was duly squashed by traffic reports of severe congestion around the Bristol area due to an accident, so we headed cross-country instead. A rather uneventful ride ensued, with yours truly doing the first 3 hours or so of the drive (I <3 my 406). We arrived on Dartmoor around 1 p.m., and stopped for lunch at a pub that used to be the school my maternal grandfather attended. A light snack, 15 more minutes drive and we arrived at the Two Bridges hotel in western Dartmoor - and true to what I’d been told, my phone registered 0 bars of signal. A snooze beckoned at this point, so we checked in, and headed upstairs.

I should note that we passed a Western Electric (or similar, I wasn’t paying attention) truck just up the road from the hotel. This will become relevant shortly.

Once in the room, I unpacked a few bits and pieces, and pondered a snooze. At this point, the power went off. Apparently there was a line fault, and the engineers were trying to isolate it. Perfect snooze conditions, so snooze I did, only to be awakened about 2 hours later by Dad telling me I had 15 minutes to get a shower - a generator had been hooked up to provide the hotel with enough power to provide hot water etc for a short while.

(I am proud to report that it took me over 5 minutes to work out how to get the hot and cold water feeds balanced so I wasn’t doing an impression of a lobster or someone tossed into the Arctic Ocean.)

Once showered and brushed up, I got nominated to act as transport for my grandparents, as the hotel had arranged to move the entire party down to Tavistock - lack of electricity meant they couldn’t prepare the dinner. A quick change into my trousers and jacket, grab the partially charged batteries for the flash, and we were away to the Bedford Hotel in Tavistock.

Mum, Gran, Grandad and I then proceeded to murder a pot of tea (coffee for Grandad), provided gratis by the Bedford while we waited for them to prepare the dining and lounge areas that we would be using that evening.  Just after 6 p.m., we were told it was ready, and the race was on to get all the seating positions worked out - the original seating plan used round tables, and the Bedford only had rectangular ones.  This gave me time to practice using the SB-600 as a remote flash, and to find out that it didn’t have anywhere enough power to light the room in the fashion that I needed.  Thus the flash went on top of the D80.

The bram kicked into full gear around 6:30, with everyone showing up on a bus provided by the hotel (including the chefs, waiting staff and more).  It was good seeing so much of the family all in one place - I never realised how many people I’m related to (and that was just on one side of the family) by genes and by marriage.  I also got to chat with one of my cousins for the first time in what must be 20 years.

Dinner was most excellent, apart from the carrots - they could have been used to construct a log cabin.  Raspberry pavlova has made it into my list of desserts to look for on the menu at a restaurant.  Post-dinner, it was off to the lounge for coffee/tea and the birthday cake - none for me though, as I was busy getting people to group up for photographs.  Dad remarked to me later, that as official photographer, it’s trivial to wander over and ask people to do as you command (to get the photos) :)  As the evening wound down, I acted as taxi again, taking my maternal grandparents home - Dartmoor was rather foggy (15 foot visibility foggy), making me glad to have Mum along as a navigator who knew the roads from her youth.

Back to the Two Bridges to find the wedding party in full swing, and rather noisy - didn’t matter a whit though, I was at the opposite end of the hotel, and was asleep easily.  Slept like a log, and missed the (apparent) fight in the night that broke the glass on a picture in the hallway, and cracked the safety glass in the firedoor.  We suspect that the wedding party will be receiving some additional entries on their bill.

All in all, a most excellent bram.