One departure and two arrivals

After breakfast I left Plymouth, but not before I’d walked to the next street to post a birthday card, and passed this lovely front garden.
I had to get to Polperro next, but avoiding Looe as the festival is on. My friend who works down here is now living at the back of Polperro, up the hill. It’s quite difficult to get somewhere to rent, and he had to move from the nice place in Looe as it’s used for holidays in the summer. This place is lovely with a beautiful wild hilly garden. I used the satnav on my phone to get here round all the tiny back roads, some of which had a line of grass growing down the middle:) 
Went down into the town to get some pasties for lunch. Polperro welcomes a huge number of tourists in the summer months, and there’s a lots of little shops trying to make enough money in these few precious weeks. Coaches park at the top of the village and people walk down to the picturesque harbour. But it isn’t real anymore.  I saw only one house in the area around the harbour that wasn’t a holiday let. And up the hill here, almost all the houses are second homes of very rich people from ‘up country’ - London mostly. 
After lunch we walked up and up the hill to beyond Crumplehorn, where there is an estate of social housing - not all privately owned - yet. I think that’s where many local people live.  My friend is moving up there soon as the rent on the current place is impossibly high. 
Later in the afternoon I drove to West Cornwall  - to an inland village where my cousin has lived in the same cottage since the 1960s.  He moved down from London, I suppose he was a bit of a hippy then.  But he was also a professional photographer, who documented the working tin mines at the end of their productive life. These photos are still used in exhibitions and books, because people still seem to be interested. His cottage is down about a mile of track, after you’ve left the proper road, very bumpy. Anyhow it was great to see him. He’s 82, still does ice-skating, and the reason I was visiting was to meet his cat, and see how everything in the house works, because I’m looking after cat and house for about 10 days in October while he and his partner are sailing in Greece.  When I say see how everything works: it’s solar panels, a Tesla storage battery, an air source heat pump, and an electric car.  They are self sufficient. Amazing. And the cat looks exactly like mine, except he is still perfectly black. He’s a bit stand-offish but that’s fine.  He won’t be needy so I can go off exploring while I’m there. There was just enough daylight to see my way back to Polperro down all these tiny wiggly roads. Phew.