I love the Cornish Coast Path – it is pretty challenging – lots of steep stuff, both up and down but I defy anyone to find a more spectacular view anywhere in the world. It is stunning – and its splendour goes on for miles and miles on end. So much so that after an hour or so walking along a part of it, it is easy to stop taking it in and become blasé about it.

At the moment, its natural beauty is enhanced enormously by amazing displays of wild flowers, in all shades of pink, blue, purple, yellow, white and red. It’s a complete riot of vivid colour. I spent much of this morning crouched over some wonderful plants rueing the fact that I’d not got a macro lens and a tripod with me. Must do better.

We decided to turn our day on its head and walk before work today because we got up to see lovely sunshine and were worried that it might disappear before our work had finished. It’s like that here. The weather does everything in extremes and often so fast it’s hard to plan ahead even for a few hours. I can’t make up my mind if it’s like that when we’re in Sandhurst too and I’m just less aware of it because of being up-to-my-eyes in work worries and ‘getting stuff done’. I suppose I spend less time out of doors there too.

Anyway, I wanted to do a bit of coast path because I thought it’d be nice to get down to the sea and we’ve got the moors at hand in the blink of an eye. So, as we’ve done Looe to Polperro before a couple of times, I suggested going to Polperro and walking west from there.

Polperro is a tiny and ancient fishing port on the south coast, though as with all of the traditional ports, it is tiny these days in comparison with the industrial scale fishing that happens out of Newlyn. The boats that come and go from Newlyn are the size of small factories and there are huge freezer stores along the coast there. Polperro is light years away from that type of fishing, traditional boats and traditional methods.

Mind you, these days it’s light years from a real village too sadly, with a huge influx of tourists each year wanting some charm from a world that was lost a long time ago. We understand that many of the cottages in the heart of the village are owned by people who rarely visit them and leave them locked up for much of the year. Many of the other cottages are self-catering holiday lets so there is a constant stream of visitors to the village.

DM hates it…..apart from ‘our pub’ – the Three Pilchards on the harbourside – the place which extends a warm welcome to all four of us (including R&A) each time we need sustenance while there. When we arrive and settle the dogs in, a bowl of water and some pork scratchings make their way towards them as quick as a flash and they are completely happy.

As pub dogs, they’re good and very well behaved. In fact, they are wonderful ‘friend getters’ as we always end up in conversation with people when they are with us. Today was no exception, a Canadian couple both fussed them and we got into a deep conversation with the woman about her beloved and ancient (seventeen and a half) cat whose anticipated demise will bring about a pair of Border Collies to their home. It was very emotional.

On one occasion in the same pub some time ago, while I was eating, I failed to notice that Arch had sidled up to a man on the next table who had a crab sandwich (a speciality of the pub) and ‘made friends with him’ by putting his head on his knee and dribbling over his trousers. His reward was probably half of the crab sandwich, fed delicately to him by the lovely chap in little portions. The chap asked if Rosie would like some too – I said ‘try her’ so he offered her a little scrap of crab, which she resolutely refused to eat so Arch got hers too.

On the way back to the car and the work part of the day, we rounded a corner and this pretty little pub was an ideal photo opportunity. Cool.

Now, as I type, I am cold (from spending much of the day out in the sun doing physical work) and I have aching bits that will soon be soothed by a take-away and some wine.

Last year I was starting to shoot my calendar and two years ago, David was saving the life of a fat bottomed girl!