Early December. Mid-Wales. So remote you can walk 10 miles without seeing a soul. A spectacularly rainy and windy day. Staying on a dairy farm, 1 mile from coast path. Eating hearty breakfast with farmer and his wife. He’s been up since 3.30am, milking the cows. Rain streaming down windows. Lady of the house offers me a lift to the walk’s start, 10 miles away. I’ll walk 15 miles, finishing on coast opposite their farm. They explain that I can walk across the fields, but won’t know where to cross the fence. She looks at her husband, he nods. There’ll be a blue mark on the fence, he says, so I’ll know where to cross.

Later, soaked through, at 5pm, in the dark, using the phone-torch, I spot blue. Reach the farmhouse and dry out. That morning the farmer had walked through heavy rain, for a mile, to paint a blue mark on the fence, for a stranger they’d never see again.

What can you say?