What a big story that is for the West Country… News that the G7 Summit is to be held at Carbis Bay in June has filled the airwaves this morning. It’s a charming sheltered little spot just east of St Ives - and the news took me back to this article I wrote about a journey to Carbis Bay and St Ives many years ago. It may be a description of how a great many of those delegates will reach this part of West Cornwall… I was beginning a new series for the Western Morning News - the main daily newspaper for South West England - and it was all about great journeys in the region. And what better than a train trip from one end of the peninsula to the other? My friend and colleague, photographer Richard Austin, joined me to jump on the First Great Western express at Taunton - and our destination was St Ives, next door to the now celebrated Carbis Bay… No imagery is more redolent of seaside Britain than the series of old railway posters that used to speak so magically of long jolly days out travelling to somewhere wild and beautiful far from satanic mills and other dreadful workaday places. It’s a world that, by and large, has sadly disappeared but you can still experience glimpses of it, particularly here in the West Country.  No single entity provides such a big taster of this long lost world as the main railway line that threads its way the length of this peninsula, but even that glorious bit of engineering doesn’t have quite the seaside clout of the St Erth to St Ives branch-line that potters so precariously along the Cornish cliffs.  Together, the two represent one of greatest West Country journeys – which is why I hopped aboard First Great Western’s 9.26 Paddington to Penzance service at Taunton recently.    The thing about experiencing the mainline train ride down the peninsula is that you have the time to witness and understand how the region is put together geographically. The route skips from river valley to river valley over the odd low watershed and also, most famously, via the coast – so that you get to see how much of the West Country’s lay-out is structured.  Within a couple of minutes of leaving Taunton you are afforded the ability to do this as the countryside hurtles by in a 100 mile an hour blur. To the immediate left the ground rises steeply to the Blackdown escarpment, topped by Wellington Monument, while to the right the Quantock Hills fade away northwards only to make way for the distant Brendon Hills. These three ranges of hills are what forms the vast sweeping Vale of the Tone which provides the rail route with easy passage as traverses west.  But then we feel the powerful locomotive beginning to strain as it climbs the gradient south. Every bit of water we’ve passed so far is flowing east and north out of Tone Vale to the Bristol Channel somewhere behind us beyond the Somerset Levels, but the Blackdowns are getting very close now and suddenly there is the blackness of a tunnel. After this, every rivulet and stream flows south towards the English Channel, and we follow their course - eventually joining the fast growing River Exe to reach Devon’s capital city. After which, the Exe gets very big indeed.  Now we passengers are about to enjoy the very best of this magnificent line – the much photographed section where rail meets saltwater As the floodplain meadows give way to the estuary we enter the historic parish of Powderham and through an avenue of evergreen oaks we can see Powderham Church - once the scene of a bloody siege during the English Civil War.  I mention it as an example of the tales you can muse over while belting along in the quiet comfort of a modern train. On a dark night in October 1645, 200 Parliamentarian soldiers crossed the Exe to take Powderham Castle but, having found it far better defended than anticipated, they seized the church instead. After three hours of fighting the Royalists had to retire leaving a bloody trail in the snow - but so cold was life inside the church that the troops were pulled out after a day or two. The entire western shoreline of the Exe plays host to the Paddington to Penzance railway. Downstream, we come to Starcross, famed not so much for being the main harbour on the western shore, but for its association with the trains. The old tower which dominates the village is just about all that remains of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's experimental atmospheric railway which ran along the shoreline, but which failed and was superseded by his brilliant main Great Western Line. Next is the quaint little harbour at Cockwood. It, for some reason I have never been able to fathom, is called Cockwood Sod. Now with restricted access caused by the railway embankment, this once busy port exudes an air of unspoilt charm. Past Dawlish Warren we speed to gain the most fabulous bit of main railway line anywhere. How long the stretch between Dawlish and Teignmouth will survive the rising tide levels and wave torn ravages of global warming, no one can tell – but I reckon all Westcountry-lovers ought to travel along the section at least once before it all falls into the sea.  At Teignmouth the train blasts inland from as if thoroughly relieved to have passed the dangerous bit unscathed yet one more time, and we roar up the otherwise peaceful Teign estuary at a rate of knots that turns even the giant mud banks into a fleeting smear of seaweed and wading bird.  After Newton Abbot it’s all up hill to reach yet another tunnel that breaches a watershed – and after Totnes it’s much the same story, although the train’s traverse of southern Dartmoor’s foothills requires many more bridges than tunnels.  Once Plymouth is out of the way the route reaches one of its other great moments. Brunel's Royal Albert railway bridge was completed in 1859 and heralded as one of the wonders of the world. It was all very innovative - the two huge central arches were constructed on dry land, floated out onto the river on barges and raised up to position as a dizzying rate of six feet a week. The spans across the water at a height of 100 feet above sea-level - a stipulation laid down by the Admiralty which was worried tall-masted ships would be unable to pass upstream. The modern road bridge nest door was completed in 1962. Now that we’re in Cornwall the express train seems to metamorphose into a quieter local service, stopping at just about every junction and halt there is. Liskeard, Bodmin (Parkway Station), Lostwithiel, Par, St Austell, Truro, Redruth, Camborne (where the train does stop despite the Cornish comedian Jethro’s famous skit), Hayle and St Erth, which is where we got off. It does, of course, go onto to Penzance but we alighted at St Erth because that’s where you catch the amazingly scenic service to St Ives. From humble beginnings does this magnificent branch line grow – a journey which starts in an unremarkable siding between the mainline and the main road and which ends by enjoying some of the most spectacular coastal scenery you will ever see from the windows of a train St Erth is a small quiet village straddling the Hayle River a mile to the east, but the St Ives line leaves the station by bending away from it to the north, between a scrapyard and the sewage works. It’s true to say this is the only unattractive section of the entire journey. Lelant Saltings comes first and passengers are treated to a front row perspective of this interesting inlet. When the tide is in there’s nowhere in the West Country where salt comes quite so close to the wheels of a train. Just six feet of sloping stone wall separate the line from the waves that race across from the Hayle side of this brackish lake. There’s plenty of opportunity to catch a glimpse of the Saltings rich bird life - we saw swans, oyster-catchers, dotterel, a heron and shelduck. Halfway along the inlet the service reaches its first halt at Lelant Saltings where a good many new passengers are waiting for a ride into St Ives from the park and ride scheme. Indeed this is a very popular branch line, with more than 20 trains running every week day.  Within a minute or two we are stopping again, this time at Lelant Station. The village looks an attractive place, with a number of homes set back in well kept gardens which would presumably have stretched down to the water’s edge if it wasn’t for the line. Next we pass through a cutting as the track begins to climb a gentle gradient before being reintroduced with the river. Here we look out over the narrowest part of Hayle Estuary where the river passes between the dunes, known as Hayle Towans on the far bank and Lelant Towans on the westerly side. If you’ve a choice when you climb on board at St Erth, grab a seat on the right hand side of the train for that’s the window with the view from one end of the trip to the other.  The line now curves west and an enormous panorama of the ocean opens up as we climb across the links. Porth Kidney Sands – a wide beach of fine golden sand – stretches away just beneath the train and to the right past Hayle Bar you can see the strand continuing all the way up to Godrevy Point some half dozen miles away. Godrevy Island with its famous lighthouse can be seen just off the jagged headland. From here to St Ives the line is accompanied by the St Michael’s Way – a footpath running from one side of the Cornish peninsula to the other. Irish pilgrims used the route in the early days of Christianity when the passage round Land’s End was deemed downright dangerous. These devout souls were on their way to Santiago De Compostela in Spain and the 14 miles from St Ives to Marazion near St Michaels Mount was regarded as a mere stroll by the earnest pilgrims who were about to cross vast tracts of continental Europe. The path has been reinstated and you can follow it from north coast to south if you have the energy by following the special scallop-shaped marks that signpost the way. Once it’s reached the far end of the Towans, the branch line leaves the sea for just a few seconds before introducing its passengers to the splendours of Barrepta Cove, known better as Carbis Bay. There’s a halt here and many passengers alight in summer months to spend the day on this sheltered beach. Next there’s yet another dramatic section as the line follows the cliffs around Porthminster Point and round the final curve to terminate at St Ives Station above Porthminster Beach. Along here passengers might try looking out to sea for Jack Harry’s lights – a local St Ives phenomenon which has lured many an unwary sailor out to sea in a storm. Legend has it that pilots stationed along this coast would see these lights before a gale - and the ship seen with them was sure to be the one that would be found wrecked once the storm had abated.  Another St Ives superstition was known as the Seven Whistlers – strange whistling noises which occurred only at night were said to have spelled death or misfortune to the person who heard them. A St Ives fisherman wouldn’t have dreamed of going to sea the day after the whistling had haunted his dreams - though many sceptics put the strange sounds down to the passage of migrating birds.  Whistles or not, Porthminster Beach has always been a popular venue for lovers of sand and sea especially when the town’s famous surf beach at Porthmeor is swept by strong winds from the north-west. Passengers alighting at the terminus can either walk straight down the steps to the beach in a matter of a few seconds, or walk into this most picturesque of towns through the attractive side streets and back alleys in just two or three minutes. All you have to do is watch out for seagulls. The blighters that live in St Ives are the worst in the West and will mob you savagely if you are holding anything they might eat. My 99 ice cream lasted less than 30 seconds – much to WMN photographer Mike Thomas’s huge amusement. Apart from those rats of the sky, St Ives is as pleasant a place as any in which to have arrived by train - although the St Erth to St Ives line might be the shortest general service railway in the West Country its few miles are certainly among the most fabulous and dramatic.

There are times when everyone needs a special kind of treat and marking a big birthday very much falls into such a category. Which is why I wanted to go somewhere special for a weekend with my family a couple of years ago.   Grown up kids have grown up boyfriends and girlfriends, so everyone’s diary must be calibrated and that elusive “somewhere special” found and booked. And we found somewhere very special indeed. Shedbush Farm is a newly refurbished National Trust holiday property tucked deep in a beautiful valley just under Golden Cap which - as readers will know - is the highest point along the entire English Channel coast.     The location ticked all my boxes because it is highly scenic and full to the brim with wonderful walks. Which, I am glad to say, my two grown up children and their partners were as keen to do as me.  I remember going to Shedbush Farm on newspaper business about a dozen years ago when it was a little rustic, to say the least. The wonderful old thatched farmhouse and its ancient stone outbuildings might have looked picture perfect, but I doubt that the place was or is viable as an agricultural holding. It is located in an environmentally sensitive Trust owned area where farming practices are probably tightly controlled.  So a holiday cottage it now is - and we were hugely impressed by the high quality luxurious way in which the Trust has refurbished the place.  However, despite all that manorial-style luxury we still had to leave the place at regular intervals during our long weekend in order to enjoy all those fabulous walks. Of course, you don’t need to be temporarily resident at Shedbush Farm to enjoy them.  To find the altitudinous demesne you must reach a hilltop village called Morcombelake on the A35 between Charmouth and Chideock. Just past the excellent Felicity’s farm shop, over the hilltop heading east, watch out for a tiny lane on the right. Then, once you've negotiated your way onto it (and be careful, if you’re heading east you must cross a nasty bit of road), follow the left turn marked Langdon Hill car park. You'll find the Trust parking place in the woods and from here you have a choice of numerous walking routes. Views. That's what this place is all about. You are treated to huge views from the moment you begin your walk above the charming village of Chideock. It lies far below to the east (Shedbush is to the west) among those knobbly hills and Hobbit-like vales for which West Dorset is much celebrated. At just over 600 feet, the car park is at much the same altitude as the top of Golden Cap itself, so when you come to the edge of the forest at the end of the track which heads south, you are delighted to discover that only a small dip separates you from the famous hill.  From this angle Golden Cap looks like an Alp - perfectly conical so you think the top must be crowned by a small peak. It's not, because the peak stretches in a tiny escarpment toward the sea, but you only find that out once you've climbed the steep footpath to the top. The best walk we did during the weekend was to turn left, or east, here and head down the coast path to the beach at Seatown where there’s a good pub called The Anchor next to the shore. Apparently this area was once a sort of Piccadilly Circus for smugglers and excise-men. Here’s a note from the Rev C.V. Goddard, who was vicar of Chideock (situated just inland and pronounced Chiddick), between 1890-95:  “Samuel Bartlett (a churchwarden) told me the particulars of the last cargo run. His father landed it. On arriving off the coast after a fortnight's fog he had to drop the kegs off the coast on the trawling ground where they remained sunk for six months. He brought his ship round from Portland Harbour and picked them up, recovering 120 and losing one. “The other half they afterwards tried to land east of Seatown but the Coast Guard or Preventive men saw them, the night too was gone and day broke as old Bartlett was shipping ashore. Some of the tackle got hitched, so there was nothing for it but to put to sea and drop them over the side again.” The ‘Chideock Gang’ plied their business in the 18th century, along the remote coast between Seatown and Charmouth. They were led by the enigmatic ‘Colonel’, thought to be a local gentleman. With Golden Cap as a look-out, the gang were fairly safe from arrest as they could see the hated excise-men coming for miles. We were soon admiring the great inland vale around the village of Chideock as we continued east along the coast path up mighty Doghouse Hill.  I am told this was traditionally staunch Roman Catholic country and it was from some local big house that the ‘Chideock Martyrs’ were taken. One was a Cornishman from St Austell and after being arrested and taken to London, he and three other unrepentant Catholics were condemned, though they were offered a chance of saving their skins if they converted to Protestantism. They refused and were duly martyred at Dorchester on 4th July, 1594. Maybe this has something to do with the hill being called Doghouse. Perhaps one of the martyrs came from Doghouse Farm just down the hill… Across the high coastal eminences we walked towards Thorncombe Beacon where there’s a real beacon post crowned by a steel brazier. But you soon forget that and everything else when you see the view ahead. It must be one of the finest coastal vistas anywhere – you can see all the way along Chesil Beach to Portland Bill. Far below is Eype Mouth, to which we descended so we could get onto the golden gravel beach and walk along the shore to busy West Bay. This curious resort is so well furnished with eateries of all kinds, it makes a perfect place for lunch.  All you have to do next is return from whence you came - either by walking or by catching the regular and rather famous X53 bus service back to Morcombelake.

There are many reasons for taking a walk, but one particularly satisfying excuse is to go in search of some literary connection or other. You’ve read a novel and your imagination has been excited by thoughts of a distant landscape - so you put on your boots and march to the place where it’s all supposed to have happened…  Which is exactly why my poet pal James Crowden invited me to walk around Lambert’s Castle Hill after I’d mentioned to him that I’d recently reawakened a fascination for Geoffrey Household’s 1930s novel, Rogue Male. I reread the book recently after the author Robert MacFarlane wrote an interesting account of trying to track down the real-life location for the book’s iconic central location.  Which is, as many people will know, a hole in the ground. The unmanned British sportsman in Household’s novel has taken a failed assassination shot at an evil European dictator, which you imagine as a thinly disguised Hitler. His all-powerful Nazi thugs chase this hero back to the British countryside where he, literally, goes to ground. MacFarlane waxes lyrical about Household’s ability to describe a sense of place - an ability which put this novel head and shoulders above most thrillers written both then and now.   “There is a sustained analogy between land and mind, whereby the narrator's access to his buried emotions is enabled only by means of a literal digging into the Jurassic bedrock of south-west Dorset,” he writes.  And so we set out on a figure of eight shaped hike that would take in both Lambert’s Castle Hill and Coney’s Castle, which both loom high above Marshwood Vale.  A local historian who joined us on part of the walk pointed east to the back end of a long green hill that rises from the coast above West Chideock. “That is the hill where the Rogue Male goes to ground,” she said. “But Household used an amalgamation of places around the hill to develop the location for his novel.” We had parked at the National Trust car park on the B 3165 road which heads inland from Lyme Regis to Crewkerne. It’s well worth a trip up to Lambert’s Castle because of stunning views which reveal the very heartlands of Hardy Country. It’s been a busy place down the centuries. Iron Age fortifications encircle the high ground that suddenly falls away steeply in every direction but one. Around 2,500 years ago this was a frontier zone, and it is probable that all sorts of internecine skirmishes were fought along its many ridges. The Durotriges people lived to the east, and the Dumnonii to the west - and it may have been a case of never the twain shall meet, unless it was in battle. So vague is our knowledge of this early history it’s not really known whether these hill-forts on the Dorset-Devon border were frontier posts or simply secure places to shelter families and domesticated animals from the predations of wolves and raiding parties. Anyway, the level clockwise walk around the plateau offers some of the easiest hill-walking in the region. A wide path runs along the edge. Strolling along it you have no idea that you are actually walking along part of an old racecourse. Who would want such a thing up here and why? The answer lies in the annals of the Lambert Hill Fair, which was staged here for centuries. Horse racing was just part of it. Apparently earthworks dotted about the hilltop are all that remains of the many fair buildings. There is documentary evidence of the fair existing from 1709 until about 1947 - and I bet those old records hide a fine tale or two in their dusty annals. Our walk took us to the north-east corner where panoramic views of central Dorset opened up before us. To the north-east there’s another flat-topped hill with an Iron Age fort, called Pilsdon Pen.  And so on. The ridges go on and on for miles. Just over two centuries ago some - including Lambert’s Castle Hill - were chosen for the most advanced telecommunications system the world had ever seen. The relay stations were an integral component in a chain designed to link Plymouth with London. Should Napoleon have come knocking on Devon’s door, this system of large shutters hoisted up masts, could have had news in London in under 20 minutes. It required a man who could understand the complex code of shutters being constantly on duty at each station. 200 miles in 20 minutes was not bad in those pre-telegraphic days when it would have taken someone a week to ride the distance on horseback. At the south-eastern tip of the plateau we found the path that descends to Coney’s Castle lying, slightly lower, half-a-mile to the south – and as we strolled down it we were treated to views of the English Channel twinkling a few miles down the valley at Charmouth.  By taking the quiet, level, lane straight in front of us at the bottom of the slope we walked across to Coney’s Castle. Its ramparts have been puzzling archaeologists because they’re in two separate areas and no-one can decide if the larger or the smaller came first. Next we walked further south down the lane to find the track on our right which took us back around lower contours and brought us back to the hamlet of Fishponds, just under Lambert’s Castle. By following the lane east past the pond and that gave the place its name we were eventually able to find the path which climbs directly back up to the National Trust car park. And so I had my literary linkage - and it was accompanied by some of the best panoramas you can enjoy anywhere along the South Coast.  Fact File To find the walk: go to the National Trust car park at Lambert’s Castle Hill on the B 3165 Lyme Regis to Crewkerne road. Distance and going: 3.5 miles, easy going with one steep descent and climb. LOCAL KNOWLEDGE Close Shave A couple of miles east of this walk we discovered the wonderful Shave Cross Inn tucked down a lane in Marshwood Vale. The 14th-century, flint-stoned, thatched-roof watering hole has recently been taken over and refurbished - and is well worth a visit.  Telling porkie pies The Shave Cross has an impressive menu, but as we had hills to climb we were content with the resident bar-special - an excellent locally created pork pie with a bowl of homemade red coleslaw. The subject of pork pies is an important one - why not email me your favourites at porkpies@martinhesp.co.uk Longing for Lyme Glimpses of the distant twinkling sea on this hike might tempt you - and why not? Lyme Regis is just a ten-minute drive from Lambert’s Castle and the West Dorset resort retains a special charm in midwinter.

The more I research the subject of food and drink, the larger and louder the question arises… Why didn’t we do that? It began a few years ago when the award-winning West Dorset chef Mark Hix and I were discussing the concept of pesto and he showed me how to make a West Country version with extra virgin rapeseed oil, wild garlic, local cobnuts and some scraps of dried-out ultra-mature Somerset cheddar.  Simple and very, very, delicious. But why didn’t West Country folk always make such a wonderful and easy-to-make sauce out of these locally sourced odds and ends, I wondered? And I’ve been wondering such things ever since - including a couple of weeks ago in these pages when we featured bottarga, or “Sardinian gold”, made of salted grey mullet roe. Plenty of grey mullet are caught around West Country coasts, but when was the last time you heard of anyone doing anything with the roe - let alone processing it to the extent that it becomes as expensive as caviar? I’m not talking here about some fancy exotic style of food preparation that you could only do in a hot country with special ingredients like strange fish, tropical fruits, and so on… I’m interested in very basic techniques which utilise ingredients that we either share or have our own version of The BBC Archer’s ex-agricultural advisor, Graham Harvey, and I were discussing the conundrum one day and he reckoned it was all to do with the big disconnect from the land which occurred after the UK Inclosure Acts and during this nation’s race towards industrialisation. It’s a fascinating theory, and one which I believe to be true. It would certainly help explain the mystery behind today’s food feature - the question why we don’t have a tradition of serving tapas or mezze style dishes in the UK. I was pondering this recently after the postman shoved a parcel though my letterbox containing a tome called The Mezze Cookbook, Sharing Plates fro the Middle East (published by Phaidon).   Sharing plates - or small platters of this, that, and the other - are part of the traditional cuisine in a great many countries and they offer an interesting, inclusive, friendly and usually delicious and varied way to have lunch or supper. Which is why things like tapas and mezze based restaurants are coming so hugely popular in the UK. Five out of six London restaurants I’ve dined at this year specialised in sharing plates. But why weren’t the British up for a bit of sharing down the centuries?  Why did we eschew the idea of lots of little plates being brought to the table in a continuous timeline throughout an evening of communal merriment - and go for the bung-it-all-on-one-plate-per-diner model instead? Maybe the answer lies in those dreadful Inclosure Acts. One imagines that tapas or mezze came about because peasant folk in countries as diverse as Spain, Greece or Lebanon would collect anything that was edible, either in their little fields or orchards or out in the countryside or along the coast. Whatever they brought home would be prepared to its best advantage - and often that means just having the thing by itself without it being used as a sub-ingredient in some complex final dish. This partly explains why tapas or mezzes are so popular today - they tend to be simple fresh food, cooked simply - which is so often a winning formula.  Anyway, you can’t imagine the poor ex-peasant factory workers who had been banished from their fields doing much food collecting in their newly urban lives. So the land enclosures, which robbed the poor to give to the rich, eventually gave rise to the Industrial Revolution, which in turn brought about the concept of industrialised food.  And so the simple combo of meat-and-two-veg became the order of our culinary day - and we were able to build a technologically-driven British Empire on the back of the fact that our workers needed to devote very little time to their nutrition or food preparation. Which may have turned the world map pink, but didn’t do any favours to our culinary traditions in these islands.  Now, though, we are busy trying to retrieve the situation. Just look at the number of food based TV programmes there are.  Most national weekend newspapers nowadays feature photos of food and promises of recipes on their front pages. And sharing plates - or mezzes, tapas, whatever you call them - are offering a new way of providing food for our family and friends.    Here’s what food writer Salma Hage has to say about mezze: “In today’s modern world, whether in the East or the West, making lots of smaller dishes to share is a brilliant way of eating. Many of the dishes can be prepared in advance, and they can easily be mixed and matched to make a meal that suits you. “People with different diets, be they gluten free or vegetarian, can all be accommodated,” she adds. “You can prepare a full mezze feast for your loved ones, and keep the dishes coming like there is no tomorrow - or make a smaller selection and eat them at the beginning of a meal. Some home marinated olives and a falafel make an excellent starter. “Mezze is a mixture of traditions,” she says. “Sharing food, celebrating being together, having plenty on the table, and welcoming new faces - showing how the philosophy of this age-old way of eating resonates to this day.”  At this point you’re maybe be thinking that the making of lots of little sharing plates means preparing a dozen meals instead of one. But the way I see it’s more about dividing the way you deliver the food. For example, a classic English Sunday roast (which I love and will never cease to prepare and enjoy) can actually be a number of potential dishes which are all shoved onto one big plate. You could, if you wished, turn it into a number of mezze-style sharing platters. The crispy roast potatoes could be dressed with the delicious lemony seed-mix called za’tar, and served in an attractive dish. The Yorkshire pudding could be flavoured and used with a pungent dipping sauce made from the chicken juices. Fried chicken nuggets could be dipped into a garlicky bread sauce. The different vegetable could be dressed with homemade dips and the like you have stored in your fridge.  It’s partly about deconstructing the various ingredients and serving them more or less alone to shine in their own right. It works. It is a revelation. And it can be easy to do.  I know because I’ve been basing our family meals on the Mezze Cookbook for the past fortnight. With the sad result that I’ve probably put on weight. So no, I won’t always be sub-dividing my food in future - but it is a very good and rather clever thing to have in your culinary armoury.  The Mezze Cookbook, Sharing Plates from the Middle East, by Salma Hage, is published by Phaidon, price £24.95. Three recipes from The Mezze Cookbook by Salma Hage Blood Orange and Pistachio Turkish Delight Shakshuka “This is what I think of when I want to conjure up a Middle Eastern breakfast,” writes Salma Hage.”It’s a one-pan dish, so it’s easy to prepare, hearty, and rich; just as home on the mezze table as it is at the beginning of the day. If I have roasted peppers around, I’ll often coarsely chop them and stir them in with the tomatoes. preparation time: 10 minutes cooking time: 45 minutes serves: 4 olive oil, for frying 1 red onion, finely chopped 2 sweet pointed (Romano) red peppers, seeded and cut into 1-inch (2-cm) dice 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped 1 small bunch coriander leaves picked and stalks finely sliced 1/2 teaspoon Lebanese 7-Spice seasoning  1/2 teaspoon chilli powder 1 tablespoon coriander seeds, coarsely bashed in a pestle and mortar 1 teaspoon hot smoked paprika 7 oz/200 g mixed cherry tomatoes, halved 1 (14-oz/400-g) can chopped tomatoes 1 teaspoon caster sugar 4 eggs 4 teaspoons thick Greek yogurt salt and pepper toasted flatbreads, to serve PREPARATION Heat a generous splash of olive oil in a skillet or frying pan over medium heat. Add the onion and a pinch of salt and cook for 8–10 minutes, until soft and sweet. Stir in the peppers, garlic, and chopped coriander stalks and cook for a further 5 minutes, until the pepper is starting to soften and take on some colour. Push the peppers and onion to the side of the pan, then add the spices to the exposed pan. Toast for 1 minute, then stir through the pepper and onion. Add the cherry tomatoes and stir to combine. Cook for another 5 minutes, until you feel the tomatoes begin to soften. Add the chopped tomatoes and sugar, and turn the heat down to medium–low. Simmer for 15 minutes, to let the flavours develop and the sauce thicken. Make four little wells in the mixture and crack in the eggs. Turn the heat up to medium–high and cook the eggs for 6–8 minutes until the whites are set. If necessary, cover the pan with a lid to cook the eggs through. Dot the yogurt around the pan and scatter over the coriander leaves. Serve with toasted flatbreads at the centre of your mezze table. Lentil and Bulgur Wheat M’juderah M'juderah is a gentle and calming combination of lentils and spiced, crispy onions.  Preparation time: 10 minutes + 30 minutes + soaking time - cooking time: 40–45 minutes  serves: 4 1/2 cup (3 1/2 oz/100 g) coarse bulgur wheat 4 tablespoons sunflower oil 5 onions: 3 sliced and 2 cut into rings 1 1/4 cups (9 oz/250 g) dried Puy or green lentils, rinsed 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander 1 teaspoon Lebanese 7-Spice Seasoning  salt and pepper PREPARATION Soak the bulgur wheat in boiling water for 30 minutes, then drain and squeeze out any excess water. Heat 1½ tablespoons of sunflower oil in a large skillet or frying pan over medium heat. Add the sliced onions and sauté for about 20 minutes, until soft and golden. Add the lentils and the spices to the onions, then sauté for another minute. Cover with 2 ½ cups (20 fl oz/600 ml) of boiling water, and cook for about 20 minutes, until the lentils are tender (adding more water, if necessary). Add the bulgur wheat to the pan and stir to combine. Season well with salt and pepper, then set aside and keep warm. Heat the remaining 2 1/2 tablespoons of sunflower oil in a large skillet or frying pan over medium heat. Add the onion rings and sauté for about 8 minutes, until crispy and caramelised. Drain on paper towels. Serve the m’juderah topped with the crispy onion rings.

Cancellations are a fact of life, but they almost always leave to a sense of disappointment in one way or another - and if you’ve been promising yourself a walk on a beautiful uninhabited island that sense of disenchantment can be even more profound. Samson haunts me. Its beautiful pure white beaches, its clear waters and windswept heaths, its twin hills and ruined farms, its unutterable loneliness - all have haunted my thoughts on a regular basis ever since I stepped upon its hallowed shores many years ago. On that occasion I had been invited to witness the remarkable sports day which the archipelago’s primary schools enjoy on the huge white beach each year. I don’t know whether they still do it, but I recall the occasion as being one of the most remarkable I have reported on in the all years I wrote for the South West’s main daily newspaper. So you can imagine how disappointed I was one year to realise my annual visit to the WalkScilly hiking festival wasn’t going to happen. I’m still not quite sure why the arrangement fell through - but my slender consolation was that weather of the beastliest kind hit the West Country on the day I was meant to be leading a walk. Obviously, the trip over to uninhabited Samson which I’d promised myself obviously didn’t materialise - so I made amends by revisiting the island in an article which appeared across the newspaper group and which proved hugely popular. Why? Because there is something unique and unequalled about exploring an uninhabited island. Solitude cloaks you from head to foot, but it's more than the sensation of aloneness. There are boat trips to Samson throughout the summer, though times vary thanks to tides and shallow approaches - or if there's a group of you, chartering a boat is not the costliest thing in the world. It's a 25 minute voyage from the harbour at St Mary's to the landing bay on Samson. A quick dinghy ride and you are on the sands. The first thing that greeted me on my last visit was a brief but heavy rainstorm, so I sheltered in the rocks just under the low peak of North Hill. It was rather pleasant, huddled there under a granite overhang, watching the shower chase across neighbouring Bryher and on to Tresco, then Tean and lastly St Martin's. Then the rain was gone and all I saw for the rest of the day was wall-to-wall sunshine. I climbed the rocks to the very top of the hill - which must be all of 80 feet in height - and from there you can admire three-quarters of the archipelago stretching around us. Next I skirted around the northern coastal edge of the island and into the western bay - I could have simply marched down the central path, but it’s always fun to walk around an island rather than march directly across it. Between the island's two hills there is a low, narrow, grassy plain that also divides the eastern and western beaches. A thousand gulls will come to see what you’re up to as you explore this area, and a thousand more will sit watching you from the old stone walls that line South Hill. They are, for the most part, lesser black-backed gulls, and they will have about them the look of the sinister and celebrated birds in Alfred Hitchcock's famous film. Perhaps it’s something to do with the way they muster on each and every stone - watching your each and every move. I decided to ignore them and sat there on the sands looking out to neighbouring White Island while thinking about the people who used to live here. You can still see the remains of their farms dotted across the island - particularly up on South Hill where the old fireplaces still bear the soot of blazes past. The Webbers and Woodcocks were the only families that lived here. Legend has it they were descended from wrecked sailors or pirates and at first they lived on St Mary's, but fled after a long-running feud with the Banfields and the Mumfords, who ran things for Lord Godolphin - then the owner of the Scillies. The fighting finally led to the archipelago bosses - the Mafia-esque sounding Council of Twelve - sending the military to arrest Liquer Webber and Dicebox Woodcock who were ordered to take their families to live and serve in various military batteries around the main islands in the Scillies. But Liquer and Dicebox were not interested and they escaped with their families to Samson. I once found this note regarding the story: “Their numbers grew, but the families were badly hit in the 1750s when nineteen of their men were lost when the French pirate ship they had just captured capsize and sank. They had forgotten they had earlier put holes in the hull to slow it down. The surviving women largely married into the other islands but a core remained. Eventually Samson couldn't support the diminishing Woodcock-Webber tribe and the last of them were finally forcibly removed, bedraggled but protesting, in 1855 by the new owner, Augustus Smith,” says the author of www.cwoodcock.com/scilly. All good stuff that leaves you plenty to think about as you climb South Hill and walk down to the southern tip of the island. On the way you pass a ruined cottage which is said to have been the abode of Amorel of Lyoness, heroine of Sir Walter Besant's novel of that name. So much interest in one little island. Not so little actually, it’ll take you at least an hour-and-a-half to circumnavigate the length and breadth of Samson. But of course, it is tempting to linger much longer - with a bottle for company and something to eat I could happily spend the night out there listening to the birds that haunt the skerries. Fact File Basic walk: circumnavigation of uninhabited Samson. For information on boats to island check out www.scillyboating.co.uk (01720 423999)

Few small islands in Europe can boast such wonderful beaches. The shores of St Martins have sand so fine and soft that it used to be dug up and exported so that the scribes of yore could dry their ink with it before the days of blotting paper. But you need a watchful chap on the bridge to get there at certain points of the tide - the water gets very shallow indeed in places… This walk is a circumnavigation of the Scillonia’s most northerly isle - and the photos come from various occasions when iIve walked the islands. I think I wrote the words for this about 17 years ago… Industries come and go and the fine white sands of St Martins were long ago singing in the breeze when someone invented blotting paper. Now even that unremarkable product seems like something out of the ark. The island also used to be a big name in the early-season flower industry until hotter places were able to fly their blooms into Northern Europe overnight.  A much diminished scented narcissi industry still thrives on the island but walking around you see how 100 years of flower growing made its mark. Every other dwelling has a greenhouse attached, where flower buds were once matured ready for export. Everywhere, miniature flower fields snuggle amidst thick, protective, evergreen hedges. Last weekend our boatman deposited us at the southerly tip of the island (often you will be taken to the western limb instead – adjust the walk accordingly) and from Higher Town Quay we were able to fork right and walk along the dune lined path past Little Arthur Farm. This rather idyllic establishment looked as though it ought to be nestling somewhere in one of those innocent and harmless BBC TV series they have on Sunday nights. Lambs frolicked, goats did much the same, and a young bull played with the redundant roof of a pick-up truck – chucking it about the field as if it were some hapless matador. We continued along the curving white beach to English Island Point where there's an excellent view of the uninhabited and mysterious Eastern Isles. From here the island begins to show its more rugged face as the path wends its way across the rocky downs towards the Daymark. You can't miss this building - it's a 45 foot high edifice which, windowless and doorless, is painted with bright red and white stripes. It has only one other feature, albeit an inaccurate one: an inscription claims the place was built in 1637, but apparently 1683 would be closer to the truth. Now the walk turns westward along St Martins' wilder northern coast, passing first the oddly named Bread and Cheese Cove. Out to sea you can watch the swell uneasily breaking over the Santamana Ledges and thank the Lord you're not trying to tack past them in a winter's gale. Soon the path passes Wine Cove, which is a modest introduction to the splendid white sweep of Great Bay. But at this point I popped up the path to Higher Town so I could say hello to baker Toby Tobin-Dougan. Toby was winner of BBC Radio 4’s Food and Farming Awards for Best UK food retailer in 2002 – quite deservedly as all his products are superb. The homemade lemonade is a wonderful comfort to those doing this walk on a hot day.  (This was written years ago when Tony had the bakery). Leaving Higher Town, we walked west along St Martin’s main lane until we reached the Reading Rooms, situated high on the central ridge. Here a path on the right took us the few yards over to Great Bay. It was while walking over the springy turf here that I noticed a big hawk, later identified as a Gyr Falcon, a feathered visitor which is about as common as hens’ teeth in the UK. A huge green net lay spread across the fine white sand at Great Bay – I imagine it could have played merry hell with the propeller of any passing boat had it not been washed ashore and done goodness knows how much harm to the marine creatures. I walked west along the beach to Top Rock Hill, which you have to round to reach the western shores of the isle. However, beyond this to the north, White Island acts as yet another temptation to lead you astray. At least it does if the tide is out. Then you can clamber across the bar and pretend you're Robinson Crusoe on your very own desert island. And Robinson Crusoe you'll be if you don't keep an eye out for the tide.  Back on St Martins the path turns the corner to Lower Town Quay where you can enjoy a drink in the luxurious surroundings of the island's posh hotel or the excellent Seven Stones pub, which you’ll locate perched just above one of the old flower fields just around the corner. The stretch along the southern underbelly of the island between Lower Town and Middle Town is one of my favourite pieces of England, partly because it reminds me of being somewhere else entirely.  More Madeira than St Martins, perhaps. Exotic shrubs line the way, punctuated by the occasional lordly pine, in which a thousand birds chatter and fuss in the sunshine. You can wander down to the big sweep of Lawrence’s Bay on one of the many paths if you like, but the basic aim is to return up to Higher Town. From there it’s simply a matter of turning right down to the quay were you arrived. As far as circumnavigations go – the St Martin circular must be one of the best to be found anywhere in the West Country. Fact File Distance and going: about five miles depending on diversions - easy going. Food & Drink: various venues including Seven Stones pub, St Martins Hotel and the award-winning bakery. But we lunched on wonderful fish (fresh caught local pollack) and chips at Little Arthur Farm.

For 20 years I was one of the most fortunate people in England n that I had a job which took me all around the West Country peninsula writing about people and places - from Bristol all the way west to the Isles of Scilly. Over the two decades I worked for the Western Morning News there wasn't a parish in Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and West Dorset which I did not visited at some time or other. After all those years, and all those travels, it is no idle boast to say that I really do know the best and worst this region has to offer. Not surprising then, that in recent times during the lockdowns I’ve been thinking hard about what the region has to offer. Starting in the east of the patch I recall a freezing January weekend a few years ago when my wife and I spent a couple of nights in the centre of Bristol with friends, staying in a hotel which had put on a special midwinter deal. And a great time we had of it. The more rural corners of the West Country are my normal stomping ground, so it was a treat for me to be in the heart of the big city sampling the delights that such a place can afford. I used to know Bristol well, but as most of my work took me further west I hadn’t realised how much the place had changed. It's almost a new and different city to the one I used to frequent with Bristolian friends over 30 years ago. Soon after arriving at the Mercure Hotel we walked up some steps and found ourselves in the old market area near Corn Street, which has been transformed since the days when I would travel up to town from West Somerset in order to visit the newly opened Arnolfini. We sat at a pie and mash stall and enjoyed a cheap and delicious lunch while watching the heaving crowds being wined and dined by other street traders up and down the covered market. After an afternoon shopping in the big new malls (not really my favourite occupation) we had dinner in a fantastic Spanish tapas restaurant just a couple of minutes walk from the hotel. The next day we spent sightseeing, rediscovering favourite haunts, and showing friends who’ve never been to Bristol before some of the historic delights of the city. They, by the way, were Londoners – and were so impressed by Bristol that they began looking in estate agent windows. A couple of weeks later I was fortunate enough to be able to combine work commitments that took me to the very west of Cornwall with another weekend away from home. This was possible thanks to yet another midwinter hotel deal which my wife and her friend discovered on the Internet. The result was that we had a small but comfortable room perched immediately above St Ives harbour and were able to watch with excitement as a Force 9 gale hit the coast. As a person who lives somewhere so beautiful that it is a designated National Park, it takes a lot to impress me when it comes to surroundings – but give me a bedroom with wall-to-ceiling windows that looks immediately out upon an ocean, and I can be happy for days just looking at the view.  And when the view is trying its best to heave up and grab you, in the form of gigantic crashing waves, then I love it all the better. Who wouldn’t? We enjoyed to particularly good pub lunches in St Ives – one at the excellent Lifeboat Inn right next to the harbour, the other at the gastropub called The Queens. The calories taken on board were easily dashed into oblivion by long walks along the dramatic, storm-beaten, coast. And here’s the thing: even though this was a dark, gale-blasted, weekend in late January, the hotel was crammed full. No ideas about second best staycation here – go to St Ives nowadays in winter and you will see a remote, difficult-to-reach, seaside resort which is popular with people from all over the country and beyond. Actually, it’s the same wherever you go in the West Country, especially around the coasts. I can tell you a story to prove the point, that was related to me by a high-ranking person from the National Trust 20 years ago. He said the charity owned a property on the Devon coast and, for some reason, a local pub landlord had never liked the fact that the area had been bought up by the trust. But his opinion changed after the trust rangers spent time and money doing up the local footpaths. “His pub had never been open at lunchtime during the weekdays in winter before,” my friend told me. “But after the paths were opened, so many walkers were turning up - even on wet Tuesday mornings in February - he was suddenly doing lunches and hiring new staff. So he ended up thanking us and shaking my hand.” Similar stories have been repeated time and again around the coast – partly thanks to the National Trust’s 55-year-old Operation Neptune which has allowed the charity to acquire so many coastal properties. But also thanks to unlikely things like the invention of Gore-Tex, which suddenly made all-weather clothing both lightweight and affordable. When I was a boy growing up in West Somerset my dad would take us up onto Exmoor and the Quantocks, and in midwinter we would have the moors completely to ourselves. Nowadays you will find people walking in the most remote corners of the West Country - even on those wet Tuesday mornings in February. We have more leisure time - and we have the equipment which allows us to ignore the wind and the rain so that we can enjoy the glorious landscapes for which the region is so famous. A few years ago an old hotelier friend of mine (who, alas, no longer lives on the Scillies) set up a special winter deal in which he attracted visitors to the islands by promising them close up views of horrendous storms. He equipped his hotel with the best all-weather gear money could buy and guests would borrow the sou'westers and other gear and go striding off around the coastal paths of the archipelago in order to witness a great ocean out its wildest and worst. Some tourism providers doubted the wisdom of this – but I ask you, if you were stuck working in an office in a vast city like London 49 weeks a year, wouldn’t you yearn a for taste of life on the wild side? So far I’ve been talking about winter breaks but, of course, the region gets even more glorious during spring, summer and autumn. Take those islands for example, the Scillies aren’t known as the Fortunate Isles for nothing. They are Britain’s answer to the Caribbean – for that is the only other place I know of where you will see aquamarine vistas that are so deeply turquoise and blue. Each of the five inhabited isles has its own circular coastal path and I would argue that these offer some of the best hiking in Europe – not only because of the oceanic views, but also because the place is so wonderfully free of traffic. Spend a few nights in the revamped Karma Resort Hotel on St Martins, for example, and you could easily fool yourself into thinking that you were cast adrift on some wild Caribbean paradise. My own beloved Exmoor is all too often ignored by visitors who drive further west of the region’s trunk roads because of some mad belief that the place is difficult to reach and there is nothing to do even if they do get here. Nothing could be further from the truth – Exmoor has one of the most delightfully intimate landscapes of any national park in the world. Any walk of just 10 minutes in any direction will reveal new panoramas filled with quaint villages, ancient woodlands, deep river valleys, purple heather moors, mighty sea cliffs and sweeping bays. Dartmoor offers one of the most tremendous highland opportunities for exploration anywhere south of Scotland. Its granite tors and crags are rightly world-famous and never do they fail to evoke a deep and primeval sense of wilderness. It is no wonder that the book said to be the world’s most favourite crime thriller was based there – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle knew what he was doing when he set The Hound of the Baskervilles on Dartmoor. Then there is little known Bodmin Moor, which has a mood and atmosphere of its own. The busy A30 might go right across it, but few turn off the dual carriageway to explore its empty moors and lonely villages. Millions might be drawn by the Devon and Cornwall coasts, but I can show you hidden seaside treasures all around our littoral that few people ever visit. Indeed one of the greatest pleasures of holidaying in the South West peninsula is the discovery of secret seasides which are far from the madding crowds. Naturally, I am reluctant to tell you about such places because there is a danger that if journalists go barking their delights from the rooftops we will destroy the very thing that makes them special. However, the beach at Pedn Vounder, down on the south coast of West Penwith, is difficult to reach and I’ve mentioned it many times before in newspapers without the place getting any more crowded. It’s just east of the more famous beach at Porthcurno, which plays host to a fascinating museum that tells the story of the submarine cables which were laid to connect to this nation telephonically to the rest of the world  Actually, I could fill a book with my listing of fabulous hidden secret places right across this region. Take the Somerset Levels as just one vast example. The great flatland is probably the least visited area in the whole South West and yet it is crammed full of beautiful, interesting, historic, wildlife-rich, crooks and crannies where you will be the only tourist for miles around, should you take to exploring the wide empty polders. And so you see, I really could go on and on extolling the delights of the place were a great many readers of this newspaper live. Indeed, I could write another book about the wonders of my own parish, which straddles half-in, half-out, of Exmoor National Park. It is one of the biggest parishes in southern England, containing four villages and hamlets and stretching from sea-level on the coast to 1350 feet in the Brendon Hills. It boasts over 70 public footpaths, several pubs, numerous valleys and endless views… Who needs to go abroad when you’ve got that lot right on your own doorstep? And to underline that idea the next few posts will all focus on the Scillies - which in a way are Britain’s own foreign country without going abroad - if you see what I mean…

Looking back over all the hundreds of food and drink related articles I’ve written down the years I reckon a lot of them will still be very interesting to a winder public - so I’ going to put a few up here on the website - starting with this piece I penned about the National Trust’s amazing water-powered flour mill at Dunster. The mill is closed now during the pandemic - but it is a fascinating place to visit and they make really very good flour - so do try to visit once the world is opened up again… Check out any corner of the food or drink scene nowadays and you will find people looking for authenticity. They want the genuine thing - whether it’s single-estate extra virgin olive oil, unpasteurised cheese made from cows fed on grass-rich pasture or bottle-fermented West Country cider.  So why not take that all the way back to one of the most basic foodstuffs of them all? Every day of our lives, most of us consume at least one thing that will contain flour - but how many of us give any thought to the actual powder that creates all that bread, pasta or pastry? The answer is that - although it’s still a niche thing - more and more people are looking for the kind of flour that has a genuine story to tell.  By which I mean: a freshly ground product that still contains plenty of essential oils and other trace elements that happen to be good for us.  And it is that trendy word “sourdough” that is pushing folk in the direction of old fashioned mills which produce flour with the help of big old grinding stones… Places where you can buy a product that is days old, rather than months or years. This is important to sourdough makers because what they are after is a fermented, ‘live’, base for their delicious bread.  What you are hoping when you make a sourdough starter is that live wild yeasts will set up house and home in your basic dough of flour and water and set about creating the fermentation process. The happier and healthier those wild yeasts are, the better your sourdough. And that is not as likely to happen if your flour has been highly processed and has had other ingredients added back into the mix.  Studies show that freshly milled flour provides added nutrients to your diet compared to flour that’s been stored for many months. Added to that, you might think you’re buying  whole wheat , but that doesn’t always mean  whole grain . Some milling processes perform several milling passes, especially on the germ and bran which are sifted out and then later added back in, reconstituting back to 100% of its original weight. Once a grain of wheat has been milled, breaking open that protective bran layer, oxidisation begins which causes nutrients to degrade slowly.  And then there’s the smell and flavour of a loaf which has been made with fresh ground flour - and here I’ll quote a website called The Perfect Loaf: “Sourdough baked with freshly milled flour takes on added levels of complexity, a taste that is hard to capture in words but brings a smile to my face at each slice.  “The crust becomes incredibly thin and crackly with a forward shine to it, a shine that almost looks as if I had smeared the bread with olive oil and then baked it. The interior of my loaves is tender, light and yields a vibrant taste compared to my other loaves.” Some aficionados, like the author of the Perfect Loaf, have contraptions which allow them to grind their own flour - but short of that, what we mere culinary mortals need is a local flour mill. And I happen to have just that here in West Somerset, in the form of one of the most handsome working watermills in the region. I refer to the mill which is part of the National Trust property at Dunster Castle - a magical place run mainly by volunteers who have just recently started milling spelt flour to added to their famous organic whole wheat product… It was mill manager, Stephen Hayes, who invited me to visit this week and a fascinating morning it was too.. “It’s a double-overshot wheel - and each wheel weighs three tons,” said Stephen as we began our tour at the engine-room, so to speak. “They are 12-feet in diameter and there are probably about 80 buckets in there. The two wheels are English oak - even when the Victorians transferred to cast iron for a lot of things. the wheels remained wood - and no one knows why they did that.  “They cost a lot of money - the new one here cost £30,000. They are built like a Meccano kit in Bristol - and if we keep on top of the maintenance it should last us many years.  “For probably about a thousand years this leat has been in existence,” Stephen continued. “Dunster was a cloth village or town - it used to have fulling mills. There were two watermills here in the Domesday Book. So we know the leat has been a really important part of supplying power to the mills of Dunster for a very long time.  “We produce about ten tons of wheat flour of year - but we could double or even treble that if we had three sets of working millstones. We’ve only got two at the moment - we’re looking for a third. “For many years the mill was tenanted,” Stephen told me. “There was a separate entrance fee, but now if you’ve got your (National Trust) membership or a ticket (to the castle and grounds) you can come in for free and it makes visiting the property a much more complete experience.  “We have a team of 19 volunteers, and a full-time miller and myself. The beauty of it is - the more flour people do buy from us, the more chance there is of them seeing the mill working. The more we sell, the more we mill and make.” Stephen and his team then took me through the basic workings as they began a day’s milling. Everything, of course, begins when the flow in the leat is redirected across the launder - the wooden shute situated above the two giant wheels.  Once they’re in motion, the shafts running through the exterior wall begin turning the various giant cogwheels inside the mill, and these in turn power vertical shafts which allow the millstones to revolve.  Just like a traditional brewery and other processing operations from days of yore everything is worked with the help of gravity. Having hoisted your raw ingredients (in this case sacks filled with wheat) to the top of the mill, various shutes take the grains down to the turning millstones, which in turn spit the fresh ground flour down yet more shuts to the floor below. This is where the quality control takes place - or the tentering, as it’s called.  “This is the tentering wheel for making fine adjustments,” explained a volunteer called Steve, showing me a small six-inch diameter control wheel. “What we do here is get a handful and you take a pinch of the flour. You see, it’s getting finer. So we make a bit more of an adjustment, give it a few seconds, and check again.” The tentering adjusts the way in which the two millstones grind upon one another on the floor above. Too tight and the flour will be finer than talcum powder - too lose and it is rough-grained.  “It’s the original of the phrase ‘rule of thumb’,” said Steve.  “The mill wheels turn more slowly when there’s more friction,” added Stephen. “Norman, upstairs, will be trying to get more power now by opening up the sluice a bit more. So it will get faster. We will keep the quality, get the speed and have lovely flour coming out.” Both men put on face-masks once the milling was underway and Steve told me: “Miller’s lung was a condition similar to the one coalminers suffered. If you’ve got the tentering right you will reduce the amount of dust there is around.”  “You can tell when the mill is happy. because the wheel feels right,” added Stephen. “The sounds are all right, somehow, and the flour is coming out at the speed we’re happy with. It was struggling a bit, but it’s coming along much nicer now.” All this would have required a lot of hard work back in the day when one or maybe two men at most operated the mill.   “Bad backs and short lives,” shrugged Steve. “That is what would have happened here back in the good old days.” “We only make what we can sell,” said Stephen as we crossed to the packing area. “With the wholemeal - you shouldn’t keep it more than six months, because a lot of the oils - all the goodness kept within the flour - disappears. We get a lot of people who come to say our flour does make lovely bread.”  Now Dunster Mill’s new spelt flour is rapidly gaining popularity: “We get the spelt from near Glastonbury,”: said Stephen. “It is a little heavier, but it is genetically purer because modern wheats have been modified over thousands of years to get to where they are now. Whereas spelt is the original stuff where the wheat came from. “The reason we are doing it is because we were asked,” he added, explaining that all the mill’s organic products are sold in three or 1.5 kilo packs - or there is a gift pack option that comes with yeast and recipes.  As I picked up my fresh milled bag of flour to take home, a volunteer called Marianne asked: “Why did the miller make a loaf of bread? Because he needed the dough!” The joke must be as old as Dunster Castle. However, another joke might soon be on me… I want to have a go at making my own sourdough, which I’ve been warned is a notoriously difficult thing to do. However, one thing I won’t be able to blame, should I fail, is the flour.   TWO FLOUR RECIPES FROM DUNSTER MILL Banana, Chocolate & Pecan Muffins Ingredients: 2 cups Spelt Flour 3 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda ½ teaspoon salt ¾ cup caster sugar 1 egg 1 cup milk 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (optional) 2 bananas, mashed 1 cup chocolate drops / chopped chocolate – I used dark chocolate 1 cup chopped pecans 12 - 16 Muffin cases (optional) Method: Preheat oven to 200°C. Line with muffin cases or grease muffin tray. In a large bowl gently mix all the dry ingredients. In a smaller bowl combine all the wet ingredients, including the mashed banana. Quickly, but gently mix the liquid into the dry ingredients with a fork – expect the batter to be lumpy! Gently add and stir in the chocolate and pecans. Spoon / pour the batter into the muffin tray/cases. Bake for 25 minutes, or until the mixture is set. Cheese Straws Ingredients: 100g Spelt Flour Pinch of salt Smidgeon of cayenne pepper and mustard powder 50g soft butter 50g strong cheddar cheese, grated 1 egg yolk Cold water  Method: Preheat oven to 200°C. Grease a baking tray. Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. Add the butter, in small pieces, and rub in to create a breadcrumb texture. Stir in the cheese. Add the egg yolk and enough cold water to form a stiff dough. Roll out thinly on a floured surface and cut into straws. Bake in the oven for 10 – 15 minutes, depending on size, until golden brown. Remove from oven and cool slightly before removing to a cooling rack.

I was watching Rick Stein’s new series about Cornwall the other night and his visit to the Cornish Gouda Company brought back memories because I went to see young Giel Spiering back in 2015. I am sad to say I cannot find the original article I wrote about the visit to Giel and his charming family - but here’s a snippet from a piece I penned at Cornwall Show a few years later. And I put it up here because I really do think that Cornish Gouda is one of the best cheeses made in Britain today. A young Cornish cheesemaker who went home from college five years ago to find a “For Sale” sign on the gate of his parents’ farm has been named the best maker of hard cheese in Britain - a product made from the family’s dairy herd which he helped to save. Giel Spiering’s Original Mature Cornish Gouda was voted the UK’s best hard cheese in a new competition set up by the Great British Chefs organisation and sponsored by Peter’s Yard. Thanks to Giel’s cheesemaking abilities and business acumen, there is no longer a “For Sale” sign on the gate at Talvan Farm, in the hills behind Polperro.   “Cornish Gouda is growing as a business and everything we make comes from the family’s milking herd,” Giel told me yesterday after travelling to London to find out how successful he’d been in the Great British Cheese Awards.  “I sold my first bit of cheese four years ago, so we’ve come a long way - we produced 30 tonnes last year and the aim is to grow even bigger. We use about one third of the farm’s milk now - but we still lose big money on the two thirds we sell as milk that goes into the supermarkets. By this time next year I want to be using at least 50 per cent of all the milk we produce.” Giel was delighted to have won a national award in the new competition: “It is absolutely fantastic because it is the most prestigious cheese award we’ve won so far - we’ve won a few in the South West but this competition is for the whole of UK.  “We were nominated by one of our suppliers and from there we had to get the general public and consumers to vote for us. Then, in the final, five cheeses were shortlisted after we’d all sent in samples - so I had no idea I was going to be outright winner of the best hard cheese until I went to the awards ceremony.”  Giel’s Cornish Gouda is nothing like the salty product, wrapped in red wax known as Edam, sold in British supermarkets. The Dutch are a nation obsessed with fine cheese - not a single person in the Netherlands would dream of eating the UK version. And Cornish Gouda is the kind of product you’d find in one of the countless Dutch cheese-shops. It is of very high quality, and delicious.  “I really did come home to a For Sale sign and I wanted to save the farm,” Giel told me when we visited his Cornish business last year. “But there was no money in dairy farming - and this farm was old and falling apart. The buildings need replacing. I said - if we are not going to make money out of selling milk we’ve got to do something else with it. “It was a desperate and necessary attempt and I knew we had to do something right then. So I went to Holland for three weeks and learned how to make cheese the Dutch way with my cousin - and then I bought all the equipment,” he explained. As he says, the 24-year old has come a long way since then. But he is still in production at the family farm where he and his parents have adapted and renovated buildings to house the sort of products which the Great British Cheese Awards wish to discover and promote.  “We hope to produce a catalogue of great artisan cheese and discover up-and-coming cheesemakers,” say competition organisers. “Both Great British Chefs and Peter’s Yard rely on fantastic tasting ingredients and the people who produce them. Together we have a social media reach of over 1.3 million and we want to utilise this platform to help promote talent in the British cheese industry.” As I say, this article was written a couple of years ago - and I was very pleased to see on the Rick Stein programme that Giel’s endeavour is going from strength to strength.

Every now and again one feels the need for romance – and what could be more romantic than a mermaid? There’s one at Zennor. In fact, there’s a huge amount about Zennor that is crazily romantic – so to that lonesome village I repaired one fine day last summer. Did I see the mermaid of Pendour Cove? Of course not. But I did see much else that was lovely and sublime on the short one hour stroll I took around Zennor Head before embarking on the long, long drive back home to Exmoor.  That, indeed, is the theme of this hike: if you are in distant West Penwith facing a long journey back up country – which for all but West Penwithians is sooner or later almost bound to be the case – you might like to try this short but extremely bracing and beautiful hour long walk around one of the region’s most divine headlands. It’s just the thing to give you the energy and vim to wend your way all those confounded miles… Here’s what DH Lawrence wrote about the rocky and romantic parish in which he lived here for a time: “At Zennor one sees infinite Atlantic, all peacock-mingled colours, and the gorse is sunshine itself. Zennor is a most beautiful place: a tiny granite village nestling under high shaggy moor-hills and a big sweep of lovely sea beyond, such a lovely sea, lovelier even than the Mediterranean..... It is the best place I have been in, I think.” More than once I’ve found myself agreeing with Lawrence in this matter, for I have often down the years walked the moors and cliff-tops out there on the edge of the world halfway betwixt St Ives and St Just.  The area is rich in walks, but this is just a little taster designed for those who are in a hurry. Park in the village and try to ignore the excellent Tinner’s Arms pre-walk in the happy knowledge that you can call in upon your return.  Between the pub and the church a small lane filters through to a farmyard where you have a choice of footpaths – don’t take the one marked “Field Path” unless you want to head a long way east inland from the coast.  Far better to veer left, down the lane that leads towards the South West Coast Path. But, if you’ve time, take a quick turn around the old granite church. The name Zennor is Cornish and is thought to be a corruption of St. Senara. She was a princess called Azenor who – in her homeland of Brittany - was accused of something or other by her wicked husband and sealed in a barrel which was then thrown into the sea. They didn’t mess about with divorces in those days.  Maybe she was the original mermaid – who knows? But Azenor is said to have bobbed her way north to Ireland, stopping off to found Zennor along the way.  After you’ve left her church, the little lane winds its way down to the coast, passing just two houses along its scenic route. We meet the sea-cliffs high above the aforementioned Pendour Cove which is where the mermaid is meant to live.  Legend has it that a handsome young chap called Matthew Trewhella had such a good voice that he was asked to sing the last hymn during services up at the church. The resident mermaid used to hear this lovely sound and would slip-slide her way up the rocks to get closer. So in love with the singing was she that her visits out of water lasted longer and longer – which is not healthy for mermaids.  Of course she eventually fell in love with young Matthew after one day actually setting eyes upon him. Needless to say, the feeling was mutual – because, as you know, mermaids are very lovely to behold.  But she was beginning to fade away from being so long out of her native environment, so the lovelorn Cornish youth carried her down to the cove and dived beneath the waves with her. He was never seen again.  Locals reckon if you sit above Pendour at sunset on a fine evening you might hear the poor (or lucky, depending on which way you look at it) blighter singing from the deep.  I didn’t. But, my goodness, I enjoyed the views you get from the big granite rocks out at the end of Zennor Head. You reach the headland by heading straight on where the lane meets the coast path. Turn left along instead and you could, if you wished, enjoy an entirely different circular walk back to the village via Carnelloe Cliff, turning inland up the valley called Poniou, and returning over the hill through the small fields.   But that’s quite a bit longer and I look forward to doing it another day. This time I went out to the end of Zennor Head and followed the coast path round into Porthzennor Cove. Along this stretch you are treated to sublime views of the cliffs that lead all the way to Carn Naun Point halfway to St Ives.  As the path ascends up to Tremedda Cliff above the fabulous but nigh on inaccessible beach, you will notice a footpath branching off through the bracken to the right. This simply takes you back across the base of the headland to a point you passed some 20 minutes before.  Turn left and you can return to one of the last places in the world where people spoke Cornish - native speaker John Davey of nearby Boswednack hamlet died at Zennor in 1891. Back in the Tinner’s Arms you can raise a pint in his honour and maybe even meet one of the present day speakers of Kernewek. Fact File: Basic Walk: short lasso shaped route from Zennor village north west to coast and Zennor Head which we round to come back via an inland path that takes us back to the coastal lane.  Recommended map: Ordnance Survey Explorer 102. Distance and going: two miles easy going.

My West Country rovings rarely take me to Malpas in Southern Cornwall, but when they do I tend to come over all lyrical. “Malpas hangs over the river like a village in a dream,” I have written in the past. “Malpas is a place invented by water-colourists…” That sort of thing. I stand by these flights of fancy partly because, until recently, I had never approached the place by road, but only by boat. And there is something about gaining access to a place by boat – something poetic and other-worldly. But recently I found myself travelling towards marvellous Malpas by car. And, being a bright late winter’s day, I had time to enjoy this jolly little jape around the cape which is formed by the Tresillian and Truro Rivers. The stroll takes you across the hill to other-worldly St Clement and back in time for a refreshing pint at the Heron Inn. Malpas is a village well accustomed to the docking of boats - there’s been a ferry here for 1000 years - and the name in old Norman French actually means ‘treacherous crossing’.  The treacherous crossing, indeed, where legend has it that Tristan and Iseult (or Isolde if you prefer) managed to trick that royal husband of hers. The story goes that she had returned to the cuckolded king and was being taken to his manor at Blancheland (thought to be Goodern in nearby Kea) where she'd be expected to make a vow that she'd always remained faithful to him. Iseult was somewhere between a rock and a hard place, but being a fast-thinker and she arranged for Tristan to be at the crossing place disguised as a leper. In Beroul's romantic tale he offers to carry the good lady across the river and in doing so stumbles and falls. They both wind up on the floor and later, when Iseult is asked, she can truthfully say that she has never lain with any man other than her husband - and, of course, the leper at the river. The hike’s first path is easy to find being just across the road from the landing stage in the middle of Malpas. For the first 100 yards or so as it climbs away from the river, you might wonder if you're trespassing in someone's private garden. But fear not, it is a public right of way... I imagine that men have been using this track to get to the ferry crossing since time immemorial, so worn is the groove between the narrow hedges that ascend Bar Meadows.  Near the top of the hill it widens out and you can proceed north along a fine broad track until you reach the road. Along the way take a peek over the left hand hedge to catch a glimpse of what must be the very best view of Truro that you'll get anywhere.  As soon as you reach the tarmac road, turn right down a track marked as a public right of way. This descends to join a field which you cross to reach the far hedge, where another ancient path disappears down another well-worn groove towards the east. Excellent for badgers and people under the height of four or five feet, this brambly tunnel will deliver you looking like something dragged out of a hedge backwards, but otherwise safe and sound, to the hamlet of St Clement. It's all worth it, believe me, because St Clement is a tiny corner of heaven thinly disguised as a West Country hideaway. To quote Liz Luck’s book, South Cornish Harbours, the place is: “Astonishingly unspoilt, and its position idyllic. Nestling outside the churchyard there is an almost unbearably pretty little square of cottages, along with a slate-faced lych gate which in the past has served as a parish vestry room, village school, Sunday school and pigsty.” The hamlet's little church and graveyard is charming beyond belief. There’s enough historic interest about the place to fill a book and in the increasing darkness we managed to read several interesting inscriptions, but missed the one recommended to me a long time ago by Truro jeweller and local walks expert, Paul Vage. “My favourite,” said Paul, “is the one referring to the old lady who was obviously a servant of some local squire. It describes how she requested that she be paid less and less for her services as old age overtook her.” Logical - yet somehow a little on the self-martyring side for my taste in superannuation. I was reflecting upon this when Paul caused me to completely rewrite the end of this article... It was Paul who introduced me to what could be described as the “secret way back” to Malpas.  “Which way did you return?” he asked. “Over the hill or around by the river?” “Over the hill of course,” I replied, describing the route that ascends, opposite to the church’s main entrance, over a field to the top of a knoll where there are fine river views, before descending through a field into a steep valley and proceeding through a wood to eventually return to Malpas. That is the route the OS map shows. The only route. The Ordnance Survey Explorer 105 shows no riverside path, but Paul assured me that there is one - called Dennis Lane - that curves along the water’s edge all the way from St Clement. Apparently it is a permissive path which was created in 1986 by working parties from the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers - and a very jolly traipse it is too. You’ll find it just to the right of the little parking bay by the river at St Clement, but the entrance is a little tricky to spot - and it can by very muddy. If you prefer the OS route then the hill does offer tremendous views.  So pretty is this corner of Cornwall that you might prefer to take a much longer stroll right around the entire cape from the village of Tresillian to Truro or vice-versa, returning by bus. All easily do-able thanks to the extend riverside path that goes right up to the A390 main road at Tresillian. Fact File Basic Hike: circular route from Malpas to St Clement and back. Recommended Map: Ordnance Survey Explorer 105. Distance and Going: about 3.2. miles - can be muddy in places. LOCAL KNOWLEDGE Herein lies the Heron The Heron Inn at Malpas is a wonderful place where I have enjoyed lunch or dinner and certainly a pint several times down the years.   Plum for Kea Plums Just across the Truro River from Malpas there’s a place called Old Kea which gives its name to a famous local plum. If you are in the area during the next few weeks you might be treated to displays of plum blossom in and around coombes like Cowlands Creek where you can even buy Kea plum jam from honesty boxes at various cottages.  Skin-full at Skinner’s Also on the banks of the Truro River, just upstream from Malpas, you fill find Skinner’s Brewery which makes an excellent variety of local ales. There’s a bar and a  retail outlet at the brewery, if you want to take some samples home.

The peninsula located across the Tamar west of Plymouth is sometimes known as Cornwall’s Forgotten Corner. Visitors from upcountry tend to pass by when heading further towards the big blue Atlantic, but they are missing a wonderful treat. The coastline from Cawsand out to Rame Head is wonderfully wild and scenic - indeed, it is hard to imagine you are just a few miles from the 11th biggest city in the country.  Cawsand is a jewel of a village tucked in a delightful bay which is just inside the gulf created by the mouth of the Tamar. Forget the rat-tat-tat of the gunnery practise that sometimes seems to haunt the place - where the guns are I have no idea, but several times I have been to this charming village the British Navy has been practising for war somewhere nearby. Today’s hike describes the admirable plod around Penlee Point to Rame Head and back past Polhawn Cove and over the isthmus by Trehill. Geographers might quibble at the word isthmus describing the chunk of land that fixes Rame and Penlee to the rest of Cornwall - but if you look at a map you will see that this is a curious upside-down-anvil of a peninsula with the thin bit situated between Polhawn Cove and Cawsand. As such, it offers a wonderful example of that rare-but-sought-after enigma: the circular coastal walk. Five sixths of it is by the sea while the final furlong takes you inland over the hill back to where you began. There’s a sort of village square down in the middle of Cawsand and it’s at the top western corner of this that you will find the Coast Path. Just above the Gig Shed - which I mention because I once had a rather unpleasant experience in there while filming while auditioning for a TV programme. The local gig-men were marvellous, the problem was the awful producer who bossed us all about. She was a large, unfit and out-of-breath woman - and out of her depth - and I was drowning not waving under her overbearing direction. “I am the boss, not him,” she yelled at the mild-mannered fellows who wanted to tell me about their beautiful, sleek, go-fast boats. The memory of her almost ruined the beginning of this walk, but soon the cool glades and hangars of the wooded coast pushed the fat producer back into the mists of time and I could only hope that she eventually sank without trace in the cruel sea of local TV. It’s a level and well-laid track that takes you out to Penlee Point - which is what you can expect from a path built by the aristocracy. No bumpy-ups-and-downs for the Earl of Edgcumbe when, back in the 19th century, he had his labourers build the Earl's Drive. I guess he wanted a carriageway out to the arched grotto that embellishes the point and enjoys the most superb views of Plymouth Sound.  Now we turn west along the big fat base of the peninsula - and hot going the one-and-a-half miles was in the warm weather when i last did this hike.  Far below Lillery’s Cove looked blue and green, deep and cool. And talking of that path, I have the feeling that this may have originally run down to the sort of small coastal fields that you find all along the south coast. Early sea-borne spuds, briney broad beans - that sort of thing. I’d love to find out more about the south-facing, seaside fields of Devon and Cornwall as I find the idea of such maritime, microclimate, agriculture absolutely fascinating. Rame Head is a magnificent affair and to reach it you must climb countless steps on a detour which will lead you to the top of an oceanic knoll. Here stands the 14th century Chapel of St Michael - which is par for the course because so many high altitude chapels are named after this particular saint - Brent Tor or the one perched on top of Glastonbury Tor to name but two. The one at Rame is in ruins but I was told the local church comes out here once a year for a full blown service.  If you want to be close to God then this place - twixt heaven, earth and sea - is better than most. The wind never stops whispering among the wild lichen gardens of the holy eaves and from the chapel's gaping southerly window you can see the Eddystone Lighthouse being vertical and brave out there in the great disc-world of the sea. Next it’s north around Queener Point and north again past Polhawn Cove where an inland path strikes off up the hill to the old military road. Turn right at the top and the modest highway will take you down to Cawsand - a journey that can be shortened by finding the footpath that crosses the fields and cuts off a huge corner under the hamlet of Rame. It’s a bit on the fat side to be called an isthmus I know, but in no time at all you are back at Cawsand where you can admire the sleek gigs and loll upon Forgotten Cornwall’s secret the shore. Fact File Basic Hike: around the Penlee Point and Rame Head Peninsula from Cawsand. Recommended Map: Ordnance Survey Explorer 108. LOCAL KNOWLEDGE Cross Keys - Cawsand In my hurry I didn’t have time to grab a bite after my walk but am reliably informed the Cross Keys in the heart of Cawsand does fantastic food. https://www.crosskeysinncawsand.com Alleys and opes One of the many joys of exploring Cornish seaside villages is ducking and diving through the nooks and colourful crannies and alleyways - or opes as they’re sometimes called - both Cawsand and neighbouring Kingsand have their share. Devonport Inn, Kingsand Last time I was there I visited this hostelry for a spot of lunch… If you need refreshment in Kingsand try the Devonport Inn, which a colleagues recommends. www.devonportinn.com