Today has seen a continuation of the storms that have been lashing the South West of England. Yesterday we had a succession of phone calls in the evening from people who had seen the TV coverage of eighty cars being washed down the street in Boscastle, a small village on the coast about eighteen miles from where we'd been walking on the moor. The village is in devastation and still around fifteen people are not accounted for. How we hope they are safe but unable to make their whereabouts known because all the communications channels there are unusable. When we were taking calls from our families, we'd not seen the TV coverage but later in the evening we realised why they had all been so concerned - I've never seen scenes like it here in temperate England before.

We continue to see the squalls moving up the valley and onto the moor but remain safe in our little cottage.

So, what to do when the weather is not appropriate to be walking on the moor? Make our home a little more comfortable of course. A trip to the legendary Trago Mills for equipment and 'stuff' to make this little house more of a home. The scales and wine rack in the photo are some of the things from Trago. The builder who has been recommended to us has been here measuring up and discussing our planned renovations. We so much want to make this place beautiful again.

This afternoon has been spent studying maps and history books about the mining trade and I learnt that the pumping station I photographed yesterday alongside the Hurlers is Phoenix United, an important mine that was worked from 1844 to 1898 and produced 82,000 tons of copper ore and more than 16,000 tons of black tin.

Later this evening we welcome our first visitors to our new home, David's sister, Linda and her family have been washed out of their campsite and are going to 'camp' here for a few days until their holiday cottage becomes available at the weekend. I can't wait to show them around and to spend some time with them. There are a string of other visitors planned for the rest of this week and next so we'll be busy 'entertaining' - good fun even without furniture!

Oh - BTW the mugs have special meaning too - the snoopy ones are mine from my teenage years and he remains my hero to this day, the Prince of Wales Investiture mug is from my time at school in North Wales, I was there when Prince Charles got the title. The rabbit mug came back from a business meeting in Helsingborg in Sweden, after which I was trapped in Copenhagen Airport for five hours because of fog and the mug jumped out and said 'buy me' my fixation for rabbits agreed! The Simon Drew mug was a gift from Linda (DMs sister) - so all meaningful in their own right.