Having been home long enough to unpack and do some washing, it was back out the door and down to mid-Wales for a two day trek above the Mawddach Estuary, where we were blessed with some very favourable conditions for this time of year.

Although I’ve been down this way plenty of times before, we took our student groups on a different ‘high level’ route that traversed under the side of Cader Idris, on paths that I’d not been on before. The summits were encased in cloud banks, but we had plenty of warm sunshine on us.

As I was working with several groups, we left little signs and tracking trails for each other to follow during the day…

As the shadows grew long, we followed a rather boggy (but easy to not get lost on), trail that followed an ancient by-way across the high moors.

It was a super end to the first day of trekking, with the mountains looking superb and new views all around.

We stayed the night at ‘Kings’ Youth Hostel, where evening entertainments were performed by the campfire after we’d cooked ourselves an evening meal.

In the morning, the Heron was out fishing in the river opposite the hostel.

We continued our journey west from the Hostel, getting straight back up on to higher ground, where it felt much warmer. We almost had a frost in the valley.

Once again, it was another new path and new views for me! All very exciting!

But the best bit came when we reached the lakes of Llyn Cregennen. The reflections were about as good as they get.

Even my ‘lively’ group, sat themselves down and quietly stared at the view, mesmerized by the calming effect of the vista.

We’d have liked to have spent the day there, just relaxing, but we had to get down to Barmouth Bridge, which we could now see in the distance.

The steep path down through the woods above Arthog were full of waterfalls and good autumn colours. Soon enough we’d reached our target destination and the agreed pick up point.

We had time to get a photo on the bridge, before our minibus arrived. It was a long, tiring and smelly bus journey back, with muddy boots and sweaty people soon asleep in the back. A good journey!