Janet came to join me in Padstow on  Friday night, arriving by the entertainingly-named Western Greyhound bus. I had visions of a continent-crossing long-distance service, but someone in marketing has clearly had bigger ideas than the budget would stretch to. The so-called greyhound is more of an elderly terrier/basset hound cross:

Anyway, we had a lovely evening and excellent meal in the Harbour Inn. Strong recommendation. Excellent chips and even more excellent value.

We left at first light for the 63 miles round Land's End and arrived in Newlyn after 11 hours at sea. Most of the time on the north coast we had 2 to 3 metres of swell. I think I have used this analogy before for the non-sailors amongst you: imagine your living-room going up and down to first-floor level every ten seconds, and twisting and rolling at the same time, and you get a feel for what it is like. Once round Land's End though the swell diminished quite quickly and the last ten miles were most pleasant in the late evening sun.

This is the Longships Lighthouse with the Land's End visitor centre in the background - the lighthouse was a mile away, Land's End itself about two.

The latest development in buoyage is seen here in the Runnell Stone marker just south of Land's End. It has an almost human form - perhaps a LadyBuoy?

Entering Mount's Bay, in which Newlyn sits, we were again fortunate to be met by the locals, this time porpoises I think.

On the other side of Mount's Bay is St Michael's Mount.

Newlyn is a very busy fishing harbour that had a few yacht berths, but is easy to enter at all states of the tide. It has a good Italian restaurant and, this weekend at least, plenty of sunshine. Perhaps Janet brings it with her? Seen here at 11 am.

The harbour office here has been built to resist flooding by high tides:

Penzance is just a mile or so away from Newlyn and has a main line station, so Janet could get home in the comparative luxury of the Paddington train.

I wandered round Penzance for a while, coming across an excellent live band in a pub and then this building across the road. The Egyptian House was built in 1836 to house a mineralogical museum and shop, and is now available for holiday lets. There is a similar, but less ornate, building in Exeter which shares the same deliberate parallax distortion of the verticals - look carefully and you'll see all the lines are closer together at the top.

I'm off at dawn tomorrow in the direction of Falmouth and then Fowey, with a plan to get back into Devon waters at Plymouth on Wednesday. After that it will be Dartmouth and then home to Teignmouth, possibly by this time next week if the weather holds. Watch this space ....