‘Time Passes. Listen. Time passes.’, this quote from Dylan Thomas is carved into a stone bench high on a cliff edge overlooking St Aldhelm’s Head, where I have spent many hours drawing and painting.

Lamorna cove is at the end of a lush valley, watered by a stream running down to the sea. A few cottages and an old inn border the narrow lane. The east side of the valley has nineteenth-century granite quarries. Rocks here and in the cove show well-developed feldspar crystals. Lamorna is known for the post impressionist artists that came to work here in the early part of the twentieth century. Artists include Laura Knight, Alfred Munnings, Dod and Ernest Proctor, Chalres and Ella Naper, and Robert and Eleanor Hughes. Up to the present day Lamorna has been popular with painters, potters, craftsmen and writers including John le Carre and Derek Tangye.