“Follow the street names or just follow your nose.” “Right,” I said, “Well, where’s the centre of town?” There was a pause. “There was a grocery store…” Anne paused again, “but they tore that down.”Actually the road signs did just fine. Pamet Harbour Road, as you might hope, leads you down to the grey and still waters of Pamet Harbour. Today the small inlet is almost abandoned, but 150 years ago 500 or more boats bustled about the whaling and fishing business.

They say there was so much cod in the sea then that you could reach your hand out from a boat and pluck them in for supper Then the harbour silted up and the fish were left in peace Now, I and the cod had the place to ourselves. I wandered inland along the Pamet River, a tidal body formed by glaciers millions of years ago, which meanders east to west across the width of Truro. The famed New England fall colours were just turning under a sky blue enough to make any artist reach for a fresh stick of sable. Bull rushes and reeds waved where once poor farmers had stood sodden in the marshes gathering cheap salt hay. You couldn’t buy a souvenir if you wanted to.Not that there aren’t some retail opportunities in the area It’s not that deserted. At the Highland Lighthouse overlooking the Atlantic, you can not only get a view practically to Portugal but they also sell “furniture throws”.

I never did find out if that was a thing to take home or an activity. At the Truro Vineyards you can buy “award-winning Cape Cod wine” – words I never thought to put in the same sentence – or at the Whitman House pick up an Amish quilt from one of the oldest buildings in town. Sadly, Tiny Worthington, who sold fashion accessories made from fish net (as modelled in the form of a turban by the Duchess of Kent in 1936), is long gone.Along the main road, civilisation comes to camp in small cottages which have stood beaten by the weather since the 1930s Day’s Cottages are the oldest. An endless stretch of identical white cabins with green shutters facing the sea. Each one is named after a flower, but there are some sensational local hostelries, and remembering whether you are Tulip or Peony after a night out has its own challenge.None of that was for me. Instead I walked along the empty stretch of coastline where Marconi transmitted the world’s first transatlantic wireless signal.