We were fed and watered… very well-fed, in fact after a home-cooked Welsh breakfast at the Mid-Wales Inn… and on the road early. The weather was finally dry, the sun attempting to peep through the clouds… and there was the little matter of the mountain road we had stumbled upon the day before. With a little manoeuvering, we had managed to plan a route that would necessitate driving its full length north-westwards.

Not as far north as we had originally planned… we had taken longer than expected the day before to get this far and the timings were all wrong for one of the places we had wanted to visit. That was a bit of a disappointment perhaps, but our plans are generally flexible enough to stretch wherever the imagination takes us.

With red kites wheeling overhead, we set off along the narrow road that runs through the Elan Valley. We would miss the dams, but, impressive though they are, we were going the wrong way for them.  On the other hand… we had the roads largely to ourselves, apart from the suicidal sheep that, as in Yorkshire, wander the roads as freely as they do the hills.

And the hills were beautiful. The road we took runs for about fifteen miles from Rhyader, through Cwmystwyth to Pontarfynach. So far we were doing well… our destinations had vowels accessible to the English tongue. Fifteen miles on a deserted road does not take much above fifteen minutes… give or take an hour and a half when you get distracted…

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