Today dawns and our valley is green again. The snow and hail that blanketed it in snow are gone.

We set off early to tour round estate agents and do ‘drive pasts’ of the houses that look like they might meet our needs. It’s a bit depressing, at least half of the agents say ‘no, we’ve got nothing at all in your price range’. Prices have risen in the county by 100% in a couple of years.

We try to view a stone cottage in a pretty market town in the south of the county but the agent can’t unlock the door. We make an appointment to go back on Tuesday. It seems promising.

We do get given the details of a property that we can just about afford. We go for a drive-past and hate it. On the way, I notice a sign to another village that I know has a cottage in it that we can afford so we make a detour to look at the village. As we climb high onto Bodmin Moor something magical happens. The snow is thick and the view across the rolling countryside is so breathtaking we are amazed and thrilled to be able to witness such a scene.

There are Moor ponies wandering around and sheep and cattle unfenced graze the land. Awesome.

The village is high up and lovely but we can’t find the cottage so we decide to adjourn to Looe for a very late lunch. While there we phone our friends Alan and Dee to see if they fancy a stroll on the beach with us. They do and we have a lovely time with them, their little girl Lucy and their 12 week old puppy, Maddie. Maddie loves Archie and she follows him like a shadow around the beach for ages. What a little cutie.

By the time we arrive home the light is gone so no walking on the beach today. Good job we’d done some walking in Looe earlier.

Our day is rounded off really well with a trip to the village pub where we eat, the dogs eat pork scratchings and we enter a pub quiz for charity and do disastrously badly, coming fifth out of six teams. It was a great evening, the landlord and locals were really friendly and treated us as a part of the community. I know the names of more people in Crantock than I do in Sandhurst now!

Walking back down the lane in the moonlight and starlight with the dogs running on ahead sniffing out all the new exciting smells since they last walked this road and David at my side, I feel as though I am home.