We’ve been welcoming our first staying guests to our new home today. We’ve had visitors (Christine, Iain, Becks and babes and Alan, Dee and Lucy) before but they have been ‘popping in’ for a cuppa and to see the new house.

Of course when you live 200 miles away, it’s not so easy to pop in for a cuppa so Mike and West have come to test out our spare room. Since they arrived, we’ve given them hot pasties from our corner shop, the grand tour of the house and then a three or four miles-or-so trudge round our hill in bitingly cold winds, with the ground frozen solid underfoot.

On the trip we’ve seen and discussed our mining heritage, our elevated position (in terms of feet above sea level), our old cottage and new house, along with a healthy dose of the usual music, cars and photography that always accompany a visit from Mike. We’ve also seen lots and lots of sheep, a buzzard circling round in the valley below us and a little flock (or whatever the collective noun is for a group of horses) of Bodmin Moor ponies. Last weekend we heard a programme on Radio 4 about the heritage of ponies on our moors and we learned that our Bodmin Moor ponies are escapees from Dartmoor or Exmoor and not a unique breed in themselves. Both of the other moors have their own DNA and are genetically different but ours are not. Never mind, for one who dislikes horses (teeth), even I am charmed by finding them on our moor, free to roam wherever they want.

This shot was taken of one of the puddles on the track, frozen solid. What interested me was the amazing array of bubbles in the ice, now frozen into a solid mass. It was broken in some places and the ice was at least three-quarters of an inch thick, that’s pretty cold for round these parts, given that we’re in the warmest part of Britain.

Next on the agenda for Mike and West’s visit is a trip to the local pub where a band is playing tonight and some good old-fashioned pub grub……..what could be better?

Last year, I came home from the same event as yesterday's and felt the need to help the homeless, which I later formulated into something much bigger than my initial response.