Okay, UK, you win.

A funny thing about England — the UK in general, really — is the way agricultural activity seeps into the lives of people who aren’t farmers. That’s partly because the nation is laced with a magnificent network of walking paths, many of which cut right through farmers’ fields. So today, when the museum was closed and I decided to walk a 7-mile stretch of the South West Coastal Path, along the top of glorious cliffs, descending to sea level and climbing up several hundred feet a dozen times, discovering that a detour would add two miles to the hike, and realizing I had probably bitten off a bit too much, I was often accompanied by highly incurious ruminants who were biting off as much grass as they could. Sometimes sheep and their fat little lambs, whose tails wag ecstatically when they go in for a nurse; sometimes big bored cows. They all keep the path nice and mown for walkers, so little human maintenance is required.

Now I am very tired.