Well that was a first. I literally spat out my coffee. In front of bemused patrons of the National Trust. It is not the standard one expects within the National Trust, but it was bloody hot. I think I forgot how it is acceptable here to ruin coffee by ensuring it has similar properties to molten steel. And this was a sizeable gulp whose safest pathway was back out onto the grass.

On the plus side, the cake at Lanhydrock eased the palate and I was able to wash it down with sips of coffee after 15 minutes. Plus there could always be something cooler and soothing to come later on.

Unwilling to invest substantial capital to enter the property at Lanhydrock, the cafe was a mere pit stop on the way to the coast of North Cornwall. It was a dispiritingly cloudy, drizzly kind of drive but one in which I felt a little on autopilot: over the bridge, Trago, the A30 and past the holiday homes littering the outskirts of Newquay.

Mum and I were heading to West Pentire, where social media had amply promoted the annual appearance of poppies. Clumps of poppies. Swathes of poppies. Whole fields full of poppies. Enough poppies for influencers the world over. So many, that you can easily find your own patch.

This spectacle for once diverts attention from some classic Cornish scenery. On one side, the golden sands of Polly Joke Beach call out to those willing to carry deckchairs and bodyboards, while the massive expanse of the Gannel estuary with the tide out magnifies Crantock Beach a hundred times over.

Such is the scale, it takes a fair few minutes to drive to the car park for Crantock, run by our good friends at The National Trust. I hope I haven’t been blacklisted already for my earlier misdemeanours, but they seem happy enough to take our two quid for an hour. It is an hour to eat some packed lunch on a sand dune and cram in a walk to the fringe of the Atlantic. In the shallows it feels fairly warm but I do not linger any longer than the sole lifesaver escaping the creep of the returning tide in his four by four.

Being a National Trust bad boy I think I exceeded the parking by four minutes but I blame it on the sand-shaking and shoe-shuffling. Sensible footwear for the journey back to Plymouth. Yet those shoes took us on a little diversion, via a charming farmhouse in Callestick, a spot where they happen to churn out mountains of ice cream. Naughty shoes. Least I didn’t spit any of this out.

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Foodstuffs continued to be on the mind during other forays into Cornwall. This included throughout a three day hike along the South West Coast Path – much more of which can be digested in another post here. In brief: fish and chips, ice cream, cider, cream tea, chips, ham sandwich, double decker, crisps and beer, croissants and celebratory pasty. With some walking.

And then there was Looe. Pasty? Cream Tea? Pasty? Cream Tea? Both? For all my bravado beforehand I couldn’t do both on the same day, so instead visited Looe twice. Once to see Sarah and her pasty paradise, the other to revisit Daisies which, despite being under new ownership, still served a fine cream tea (8/10, needs a little work to reach previous heights, but extra points for cream top up).

Though it has good foodstuffs and is convenient I am getting a bit over Looe. It must be all those visits for pasties and cream teas and occasional fudge. Countless laps of the car park, voracious seagulls, tacky gift shops, stinky low tide and shuffling grockles. It may well initially charm, and does always nourish, but there are better places I might be.

So after devouring the last cream tea on an overcast day, it was straight back to the car park to gift a space to a happy Mercedes. Leaving Looe to seek a quieter, mellow kind of place. Discovered not so far away at Talland Bay, where the natural delights of the coast meet tractor-friendly dreams.

Espying there a building sat upon the cove. A scene for another day, another year. A café by the water.