We’ve had DMs folks to stay overnight. They arrived yesterday afternoon and left a couple of hours ago. For those who follow DMs pages too, you’ll see that he photographed their fabulous Christmas gift to us last night – an antique clock. A real beauty. Thanks very much to both.

To be honest, most of the time between their arrival and departure has been taken up with lots of eating, talking and drinking. This morning though we said ‘what would you like to do?’ Their response was to ask to go to the beach.

Well, as you’ll already know, we don’t need much in the way of encouragement there, so we had breakfast then hopped in the car and popped off to Crantock for a mooch about. As we left behind the moor and drove towards the coast, the weather broke and the sun came out.

Of course Rosie and Archie are keen beach-goers – in fact, we believe they know where we are going when we go off to Crantock. Rosie starts mithering the moment we set off and gradually gets herself worked up into such a frenzy that she can’t be stopped. I have this thing that as we pull to a halt in the beach car park, I have to leap out of the car really quickly because I can’t bear the noise levels from her by that stage.

Archie makes a bee-line for the Gannel, to make sure he misses no opportunity to catch a bit of white water and today, with the tide well up the beach, the Gannel was full and fast so he was happy. Mind you, of course this means (as I tried to explain on Christmas day) that the length of the beach is cut down severely so his overall walk was truncated.

It’s been the usual stuff of playing tennis ball with Rosie (that link is a real action shot) while Archie tries to bite every wave that breaks anywhere near him…..the only difference has been the fact that we’ve had DMs folks there too. They’ve picked up shells, tossed the tennis ball and taken photos while I’ve had my eagle eye on the dogs. Their pronouncement was to say they could easily understand why we loved the beach there so much. It is a truly special place.

Today, in the spirit of a new tradition, we took a flask and had hot, milky coffee at the ‘other end’ before coming home via the coast road.

My babies have had a delicious day, full of fun and frolics. This is, of course, my little poppet, Rosie, otherwise known as the Roguester, 'ohhhhhh Rooooosssssiiiiieeeeee' (when she's being a complete pain), the mad bitch and surprisingly she answers to all of the above! They are now snoozing, one under my feet and the other a few feet away. I am tired and glad to be able to put my feet up.

Last year, I was fondling Jamie's finest!