DCV spirits were somewhat dampened (temporarily) by the incident depicted below which occurred on Sunday January 11 2004.

This is the scene at the start of the task. Gordon and Terry set to work to revitalize the remains of the fire left by the previous day's squad. Doug attends to the tools and Brian gazes into the distance (so was I, the site was very picturesque).

  This is what the fire looked like later ...

 After lunch we received a call from Dorset Fire and Rescue...Did we have any teenagers on site as they had reports of a group of teenagers starting a fire? No we didn't, we said, though we did have Ben aged 5. OK, they said, so on we went on cutting and burning pine as we are wont to do.

 Later that day what should arrive but a large red vehicle containing numerous men in impressive uniforms and and big yellow hats. Try as we would to persuade them otherwise they insisted on extinguishing our cheerful fire. Like this …

 Until it looked like this …

 So we all went home.

(We believe the fire crew attendance on the task may have been due to confusion with a genuine arson incident in the area.)