Riverside property: Tide is high for seafaring buyers seeking waterfront bolt-holes

Scott Couper lives on the very edge of the River Lynher in Saltash, just across the Tamar from Plymouth, where Devon ends and Cornwall begins.

He keeps his boat in a strange old building next door. "We pop around the corner to the pub in Saltash, or go right up the Tamar or over to Newton Ferrers," he says. Estuary dwellers were ever thus, living by the tides and the movement of the water.

The boat is amphibious so he drives into the water, then unfolds the wheels and heads onto dry land. It is called Legs-Akimbo.

His father also keeps a 34ft yacht moored outside, and nephews and nieces in the village come to mess about in boats with him. The Boat House is remarkable, too, in that it has its own harbour, two deep-water moorings and slipway, and Scott originally wanted to develop it as a fantasy house. But he and his wife Linda have decided to sell it for at £1.5 million and move to France. It has planning permission for a five-bedroom house with a helipad.

The riverbanks are full of curiosities like this, remnants of old waterside life, which are regarded as gold dust by house-hunters in search of magic. "This was built in the Seventies by a man who was a secret agent and engineer, who never got planning permission but lived and worked in it," Scott says. A ferry once ran from this harbour, taking estate workers across the river each day. Now a navy cadet training school creates endless diversions, such as man-overboard and capsize training exercises.