We are on a little weekend break to Torbay. Only one hour from home it was one of the holiday destinations of my childhood when it was a seven or eight hour drive.

The weather has been very kind to us and we have walked and basked in autumn sun.

We visited favourite holiday spots from my family holidays of 60 years ago and for the most part they remain almost unchanged. Fairly unchanged too from the Victorian boom years of holiday travel.

Torbay became a holiday destination during the Napoleonic Wars , 1803-15 when European wars forced wealthy British people to stop travelling in Europe. Tourism at that time made the Torbay area one of the wealthiest locations in Britain. Agatha Christie was born in Torquay. Other authors who have lived there include Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw, Wilfred Owen, Mary Shelley, Charles Darwin, James Joyce, Charles Kingsley, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lord Tennyson, James Joyce, Beatrix Potter, T.S Elliot.

My parents visited in the post World War I I era when Torbay was still a hugely popular destination before mass tourism moved on to mainland Europe.

Great physical beauty and slightly faded glamour are good reasons to visit in the 21st Century.

For us the motivation was just to spend some time together as a three +2  dogs who are allowed to run wild on beaches open to them after the summer dog bans.

Lola is not in a photograph as she prefers to dig deep holes in the soft red sand. Not photogenic, and when she involves herself in dead crabs she is not too fragrant either.

Nostalgia also played a part in our little jaunt. We paid a visit to a pub/restaurant I first visited at age 5 with my parents. Built in the 17th century as a fish cellar and net store, the building remains very much as I remember it. The internal decor changed but the physical space not at all. I gave myself free reign to choose from the menu. 5 year old me was only permitted a couple of choices.

20,000 steps well used and ultimately well rewarded with good food.

This is not, as you may at first think a fire,  but a glorious autumn, stormy sunset. At the very bottom of the street are the wharf steps where we either walk down to a beach or, at high tide, enjoy the sound of flisvos on old stone steps.

As Florida waits for Hurricane Milton to touch land, calm views like this seem such a privilege. We will all know how bad it has been by the time our sun rises again.

Marks and Spencer are using the words Big Autumn Energy as their current call to purchase. September rushes in with a frenzy of activity after the languid, sun soaked days of High Summer, but beyond that moment, I never feel Autumn to be a season of high energy. So Big Autumn Energy is not my vibe. I feel it is the consolidation season after the energy of Spring and Summer. But the word  consolidation is never going to sell anything in Marks and Spencer or any other retailer. But it gives me the chance to use my watercolour of harvested apples to good effect.

A slightly darker energy was created when I overlaid a Red Admiral Butterfly who was basking in the sun yesterday.

She was soaking up sunshine and stored heat, on a stone wall while I gently stalked her, quietly consolidating her autumn.