When the wind extinguishes the flame of a lighthouse and a ship heads blindly towards the rocks it falls to a fishermen's choir and a group of lady campanologists to avert disaster.

Two Catalonian women are travelling through Cornwall in 1611, in the company of an Englishman and find themselves forced by bad weather to take shelter in a small farmhouse. The evening promises to be a difficult one due to the lack of any common language, culture or background. However, when they discover a rare spice from their homeland being used by the Cornish woman in the preparation of buns, the conversation begins to warm up.

The 'last' Cornish speaker (who died in 1777) returns to contemporary Cornwall to investigate the state of the language.