Quiet night ….
and then a 52 seat coach turns up at 9.50pm and 52 people from Slough get out (aged between 6 and 86) to go stargazing on the first cloudy night round here since the last Ice Age.
They went on a walk up to Millstone and back instead and then Colin McRae drifted his 52 seater Lancia Delta back in to the car park. Then they left.
It needed to be an episode of Phoenix Nights.
Then as we were locking the gate we saw some blue lights driving slowly on the opposite side of the valley. We went for a look see.
‘Hello, we’re the local rangers’, said we. Within the next 45 minutes we had offered our help to the police, deployed a drone, found a deer, found the at risk missing person, driven the police cross country to within 100m of said person, driven everyone back to the road, and offered our phone numbers to the police officers in case they ever need three slightly strange blokes in the dark with a very capable drone and a great deal of local knowledge and an odd sense of humour.
We may well have helped save a life.
Then it was the early minutes of Saturday and we just got back on with doing what we voluntarily do ….