This is a photograph I took of Felix Salmon and Michele Vaughan which they to give to Felix’s father as a present. After clambering down the hillside outside their cottage we reached Indian Brook that runs through the valley. I settled them on the rock but saw that as the weak sun was lighting them from behind my shot would probably be better taken from the other side of the rock.

This meant their just swiveling round 180 degrees, but I had to cross leaf covered ditches and streams to reach a good place for my camera. They offered to help me navigate round the rock but if they had wound up with a sprained  ankle or even just wet feet the photograph could have been jeopardized. So I made it on my own but was grateful for their help in getting me back up onto the slope for home, where  we were restored to calm with ten year-old Sercial Madeira, the wine that saw General Washington and his staff through The American Revolutionary War at the rate of three or four bottles per person per day.

I met a British army tank driver once who had gone through the Normandy campaign in Wold War II on Calvados. The French farmers had kept hundreds of bottles hidden from the Germans all through the occupation waiting to hand them out to the relieving allied armies.