Our next stop was right on the coast. On a day when you could see where your next step would take you, and had we been blessed with more time, we might have parked at Land’s End and walked the cliff path… which would, undoubtedly, have been the simplest route and, as it turned out, possibly the quickest too. But then, we would have missed a truly magical journey.

Instead, we chose to take a ‘short cut’. We would drive to the closest point we could get to our destination then walk a short way… or so we thought… between the fields and out onto the cliffs. We thanked whatever Providence had made us buy a detailed local map and set off down a series of increasingly isolated farm tracks until we found a gap in the hedgerows that looked like it might once have been a track… but it was certainly not the lane the map had suggested it would be.

We parked the car and entered the green tunnel between high hedgerows. It didn’t look like a long walk. At the first corner, though, the rutted track gave way to a narrow path festooned in greenery and wildflowers, climbing the embanked walls typical of this part of Cornwall.

These walls are curious affairs in themselves, seeming to consist of twin walls, often made of gigantic stones that would look more at home in a stone circle, infilled with earth. Grasses, flowers and shrubs colonise these walls, making them into natural gardens. The profusion of life in these sheltered ecosystems is as astonishing as it is beautiful, but when the mists close around you, and the green walls tower above you, the outer world slips into oblivion.

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