Creek Cottage, County Cork, Ireland, 20 July

The tide is in and the estuary outside my studio window is teeming with fish, some bass, some mullet and the occasional salmon. A soft, grey heron flapped casually by and landed on the stone jetty opposite. He would wait for the tide to turn before he started fishing. Across the estuary, or creek I suppose, the bank rises steeply with fat, foliaged trees. Some white birds were diving like Messerschmidts into the water, which has an opaque grey-green hue.

I am sitting at a desk that is polished and empty except for a battered, dark-green, Silver Reed, manual, portable typewriter, a box of typing paper sitting in its lid, a small tape recorder and a stack of mini-cassettes. I roll a fresh sheet of paper into the typewriter. It had been the trip of a lifetime and now I have to, somehow, commit the adventures, the food, the wine, the people, the journeys and all, to paper.