Home to Hope Cove

Cold, me? what gives you that impression?

At six in the morning on the thirteenth day, the Scillies lie abeam and into wind. A North Westerly blows, just right for making passage onwards up the channel. So be it. Tribute on Tresco must wait. On we sail, Wolf Rock to port, Land's End too, familiar landmarks - the homecoming starts. We dodge fishingboats, netting their catch in the cold spring sunshine. St Austell Bay, the Lizard, Dodman point - landmarks of memories fondly recalled, our old friends. 'Remember when...?' 'The time that...' ' The place where....' So much has changed but this landscape remains - faithful to us and our memories, never disappointing. Today it is glorious in its rugged beauty. The ash coloured cliffs with bold thumprints of ochre: lichen, gorse? The colour of treasure.  I drink in the succulent fields of green, the lemon-sherbert fizz of rape in rapturous bloom. So still is the cool blue sky that it appears two dimensional, the weightless cotton clouds pegged up against its flawless backdrop. 

Later, we watch the sun set red behind us, on so many adventures. In the milky pink night we pass Eddystone to port just as a candy floss moon rises, full, from the sea to starboard. Gliding on between, Plymouth abeam of us where so much began, I feel that this is the moment. We are riding the finish line, ending the chapter, dotting the 'i'. The long ribbon of our wake, which has witnessed so much, has finally crossed itself and the circle is whole. We are done, it is over. Something else begins. 

The rest of the night we play music in the moonshine. In the early hours we ghost into Hope Cove. A veil of heady scent envelopes us. Sour coconut, sweet almonds. The smell of gorse at its peak, the smell of Devon in Springtime: we know we are home.