Good afternoon from the camping trip!

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Our students seem to be settling in, though managing the larger number of rising second years has a few practical challenges - we gave up on cooking over a campfire last night due to both the drizzle and the problems of getting food ready for everyone fast enough. Instead, we retired to three of the larger tents and their kitchens.

It’s been a little more damp here than we’d like, but the rain held off long enough yesterday to get the tents up, and it’s cleared part of this morning, allowing for some of our nature walks. Highlights included a nest of puffskeins, two wild (but quite friendly) kneazles, and most exciting, signs of a mooncalf (there’ll be an expedition tonight to see if we can spot it dancing.) My thanks to Mr Wright and Mr Kenrith for their expertise.

Also a large number of sheep, and a herd of ponies, which lead to a fascinating conversation. It’s apparently quite a new discovery that the not only are Exmoor ponies distinct from the Dartmoor as we’ve known for a while, but the Exmoor ponies are in fact magical beasts. We ended up talking a great deal about similarities and differences between apparently closely related species. So much we’re finding out now that proper magical research can be done under the Protectorate.

This afternoon, we’ve some Herbology workshops. Tomorrow, we look forward to several workshops on charms and other skills useful for camping (we’re already all getting quite good at drying charms), and of course Thursday is the day we transfer to near Tintagel.