However, we had a far more exciting activity lined up. We’d booked a surf raftingexpedition with Ben from local adventure sports outfit Active Escape. Never heard of surf rafting? Well, it’s like white water rafting, but on the sea, or like surfing, but in a raft, obviously.
Of course, the weather was against us, the waves were too high, the wind too strong, but Active Escapes has loads of other water-based pursuits and Ben picked us up at Pickwell Manor and took us coasteering instead. From a little cove just a short drive from Pickwell we paddled out in his inflatable dingy to a point where we could scramble up the cliff and leap from the highest rocks back into the choppy water. The boys loved it, yelling to climb higher and higher. Even I managed a modest jump.

We had as much fun as we you could have shrink-wrapped in neoprene – and by the way, whoever invented wetsuits deserves to be a millionaire. At one point we were bombarded with hailstones, but who cared, we were already wet, but still warm.
Later we paddled the dingy along the cove a little to a spot where we watched a pod of porpoises playing just a few metres from where we were sitting. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any more magical a seal swam past.