Today has started off sunny with bright blue sky but very, very cold. So cold that when I tried to fill the hens’ reservoir of water before we left for Cornwall, the hosepipe was frozen solid!

With a full car, a high expectation and a great deal of fear, Rosie, Archie, David and I set off to follow our dream.

What a strange day it turned into. Before we had passed through Wiltshire we were driving through sunlight glinting on snow. Snow everywhere. It’s nearly March and yet the countryside is completely blanketed in the white stuff.

Our route passes through some pretty high places, Dartmoor and Bodmin Moor are high and beautiful. Cornwall is our most mild county – so mild the gardens there can grow palms and other tropical plants with relative ease. It rarely snows there yet today there is so much of it.

We finally pass through the snow as we approach the coast at Indian Queens. On arrival at our cottage we have a quick chat with Penny and David (the owners of the cottage) and then head for the beach to run off some dog energy. The scenery is spectacular. A forbidding sky, intense cold and a bitter wind howls across the beach and into the dunes. Somehow though it never matters how cold it is here, even the strongest winds just blow away your cares and the cobwebs that normally fill your mind.

I love it here.

David is concerned. He tells me he is worried that I will be devastated if we can’t fulfil our dream but that I must be prepared for that because we must only go for it if we feel it is absolutely right for us.

I am concerned too. I want this so much that I know I set myself up to be crushed. I know if we fail to find our rainbow that I will go home inconsolable.

Walking back from the beach, the sky starts to throw its load at us. Starting with tiny particles of snow, they increase in size and density and within half an hour of arriving back in our cottage the whole valley is white. It’s magical and it’s ours – at least for the moment.