The course of my affections, in terms of love for the landscapes of Britain, has always been very firmly set south-west, and above all for those two counties whose lifeblood has always been the sea, and who point, like a massive arm bicepped by Devon, forefingered by the Land's End peninsula, to some secret centre further south-west still — an image that may seem farfetched today, but was certainly no so to the original Celtic and pre-Celtic inhabitants of the region.