A few miles from us is Pencarrow, a rather grand Cornish country house dating from the 17th/18th century (these things were never built in one go). The estate belonging to the house has formal and rather pleasant landscaped gardens at the front and a large, mainly wooded area beyond. There's a lake, an ice house and a crystal grotto to see. A walk around the whole estate takes at least an hour, and that's what we spent this morning doing (before the rain set in). At the far end of the estate, after a bit of an uphill slog, you reach a very fine example of an Iron Age hillfort with several rings of well-preserved banks and ditches. The site has never been excavated. It probably dates from around a few hundred years BC. It's possible to book a guided tour of the house. We've done that before so we didn't do it today. The house is beautifully preserved inside and it contains, among other art works, several paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds. In 1882 Sir Arthur Sullivan, of Gilbert and Sullivan, composed part of Iolanthe here, and the piano at which he composed it is preserved. In 1999, an original Beethoven manuscript containing a 22-bar fragment of a previously unknown string quartet was found here.

The grounds contain impressive collections of rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias and conifers (perhaps not best seen in late October, though the autumn colours were lovely). The story goes that, in the 19th century, a visitor was very impressed by the sight of an Araucaria tree, remarking that the complicated nature of its branching would have puzzled a monkey. To this day, the tree is still known as the monkey puzzle tree. And that, I tell you, is a true story!