We drank coffees by the harbour early this morning, and then I bought a Cornish saffron bun and half a Swiss roll from a little old lady in her little old cake shop on Fore Street. We were adventuring to Land’s End, and we knew we would need snacks.

The double-decker bus rattled and pulled into the bay at the Penzance terminus, and then we were off, in fits and juddery starts up the crowded, sloping main street and its chain of chain stores, and then higher still into the hills, slowly, until suddenly, it seemed, we burst into the sun and the wide country. We curved up and down the narrow, tree-lined paths while tree branches clicked and tapped and scraped against the windows; southwards through St Buryan our city bus made our way through fields and farms while left and right the sheep and dairy cows took a leisurely lunch.

At Land’s End, an hour later, the bus would go no further. The earth before us – past the gift shoppe and the greasy cafeteria, past the Dr Who media extravaganza room – seemed to stop in mid-air. There was land, and then there was sky, and on either side of us the rocky granite cliffs dropped down, down, down to the ocean, where the water was dark blue and light blue and the ten shades in between, till it crashed white on the rocks.

Ten feet down from the girl eating her pasty in her car, we sat at a picnic table and unwrapped the Swiss roll. (The saffron bun had been dealt with easily enough, chunk by delicate, torn-off chunk, in the bus to Penzance. It was intrigue that had led me to the saffron bun. I’d never had such a thing, and wasn’t sure what to expect. I should have expected a raisin bun, it turned out – a yellow raisin bun that tasted of nothing between the raisins.)

It was intrigue, I say, that had led me to the saffon bun, but it was desire plain and simple that had brought us, me and Olive both, to the Swiss roll. The Swiss roll, it appears, is the taste – nay, the essence – of diverse childhoods different in many other ways. This one, now, at Land’s End, was soft, and dusted with sugar. The light pastry paper fluttered in the wind. In the sunlight, it had become clear that the jam was of a colour unknown to the natural world. Also, I had neglected to bring a fork. I dug into the pastry with my fingers. The roll tasted of nothing between the jam, and the jam tasted of plastic and sugar. “She was such a nice old lady,” I said, and I was, I believe, doleful. “You cannot trust the natives,” Olive said. He had taken a bite of the Swiss roll, too. “They will smile at you and then stab you in the back.” He must have meant that they will throw the Swiss roll at your back. He folded up the Ordnance Survey map and we set off northeastwards, in search of lunch.



We picked our way up and down the scrubby coast, with the great ocean on our left. Sleek jackdaws sheltered from the wind on ragged, rocky platforms jutting out from the water, while the gulls swooped white and grey above us. We jumped from rock to rock over small and sparkling creeks, and squeezed past the thorny branches of wild and unforgiving plants. We sat on big, flat rocks and watched the waves. I turned my face from the wind, and all I could hear then was the sea.

“Mowmy!” I texted Mowmy. “We are at Land’s End, walking walking walking, and the sun is shining off the sea.” “Waaah,” she texted back, “hope u have sunblock and hat.”



We came down into Sennen Cove, passing the harbour with its so many fishing boats at rest. We sat down at a table by the beach – it is the end of the season, and beside us most of the chairs were stacked high – and we ate fresh crab sandwiches on buttered white bread.



During the walk back, the lowering sun turned the cliffs a bright and deep orange. The sky was very low, and very vast. The bus back to Penzance passed fields and fields of winter cauliflower, the crops in neat and full rows, their large, deep-green leaves perfect for Peter Rabbits to hide behind. When asked, our bus driver, a lean man with a long nose, said he likes his cauliflower grilled.