However much I love being in Cornwall, there is always something I miss about home. This time it's the fire - even though the central heating in the house we stayed in is more than adequate, you can't beat the warmth and ambience of a real fire.

The previous owners of our house bricked up the fireplace, knocked the chimney off the roof and replaced the whole lot with some extremely horrible fake bricks (they look and feel like real bricks but are only 1/2 inch thick) on the chimney breast which was completely out of character of the house and a hideous gas fire that didn't even work when I moved in nine years ago.

Throughout the renovations of the house, I've always had a 'no compromises' rule - I do nothing to a room until I've saved up enough to do exactly what I (and later, when David moved in, we) want to it. This cast iron fireplace took lots of research - it's difficult to find things that are suitable for real fires these days - the gas imitations are much less hot so you don't need expansion bricks and stuff like that. Chimneys are also not just a matter of sticking a few bricks in a square on top of what you had - they need to be a certain height to suck the smoke up from the fireplace. I put this fireplace in and had a chimney stack rebuilt four years ago and it's one of the best features of the house.

It was a wonderful holiday but it's good to have the comforts of home again!