Childhood holidays are always rose-tinted or, in my case sea-blue-tinted, with a touch of golden sand, sweet green pastures and woolly white lambs.

The Cornish farm and seaside holiday is a classic, and it had been mine all the years of my childhood. I will never forget the leaping thrill at the first sight of the sea – that surreal blue triangle between a dip in the land. And this was always after a long journey in the back of the car with two older siblings in pre-seatbelt times on the trunk roads of the early 1970s. In those days, we had to leave the London suburbs at two in the morning to get anywhere fast.

Decades later, I was desperate to go back. Cornwall has always been my promised land. But I wasn’t kidding myself. I knew it would be different this time round: they have theme parks and holiday parks and proper by-passes now. But in need of peace, quiet and time to contemplate, I booked myself into a little cottage near Polperro to see if memories of the past could still cast their spell.

I felt delighted as I drove over from Devon on the Tamar bridge but then had a moment of doubt. Cornwall was all grown up and, contrary to my dream, seemed at first glance to be no different to any other place. But this feeling didn’t last too long.

Meticulously following the step-by-step written directions (no point having a sat nav, they don’t work in the ‘middle of nowhere’ valleys down here), I turned off the A road, turned off the B road and found myself in another world. I journeyed along a tiny unclassified lane, trundling between high hedges from which birds darted quite recklessly in front of me. Every now and then I’d catch glimpses of sublime views through farm gates, driving like a nun out of courtesy to the pure beauty of my surroundings. 

The air grew sweeter, bird song louder, the 21st century receding with every yard I travelled. The lane narrowed, winding tighter, as if it had been laid out for the little people. I found myself deeper and deeper within a secret wooded valley. Trees embraced the lane, meeting overhead; thick moss, ferns and ivy clothed the dry-stone walls that reared up either side, threatening to scrape the paintwork. On I went, plunging through the green darkness of an ancient verdant tunnel.

And then I burst back out into sunlight. I stopped at the crossroads; a tiny settlement of granite-built cottages perched on the valley side. I was looking at a scene that had not changed for centuries. And around the corner, my destination: Old Lanwarnick, a Domesday Book-listed farmhouse and its cluster of converted cottages and barns.

I pulled up outside my cottage, named the Honey Pot, by a patch of wild pink foxgloves and switched off the engine. The first thing I heard, apart from the silence of deep countryside settling down like a comforting quilt, was the gentle buzzing of the bees. Life will be sweet in the honey pot.

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