The longer days are tempting me further from home, so on the first morning with no forecast rain I head north into the county of Gwynedd. Skirting the estuaries of the Dyfi and the Mawddach, I pitch up at Harlech just as a light drizzle begins to fall. From the old shoreline, the great bulk of Harlech Castle and the crag on which it stands is imposing both by nature and design, the walls of dressed stone rooted directly into the ancient Cambrian rock.
Today, with the sky a uniform grey dome, the towers that define the structure are wet and dark with accumulated rain. In a group of bare trees clinging to clefts in the rock, three rooks fossick around in last year’s nests and argue over possession.
