Sunny.

Today has been mostly sunny and as can be seen from the photo below a few light showers though to begin with it looked and sounded as if we were going to have a day of rain.

Last night the clocks went back an hour which at least makes me feel less guilty about our less than early morning routine. 

The walk today was a valley walk around the village of Penrhyn-coch a few miles inland of Aberystwyth. I'd scouted out the route there using Google street view but hadn't gone quite far enough along the road and parked in a pull-in 100yds from the car park meeting place. However a member of the group spotted me and another lady who had also parked there and waved us on. 

Because of the risk of heavy showers we didn't go right to the top of the hills but walked along half-way up the slope towards our destination of an old lead mine.

Today it was the trees that were the star of the show. We walked beside what looked to be an old greenway (farm lane) the sides of which were lined by a variety of trees; ancient oaks, hawthorn, ash, hazel, rowan and blackthorn. The blackthorn we saw was smothered in fat sloe berries. Great for making sloe gin if you're that way inclined.

At one point we came to an untidy stop when the new small gate across the public footpath was found to be tied up with baler twine that was impossible to undo. The wire fence next to it looked to be new but unfinished and while I and a couple of others were quite happy to step over the fence there were others who seemed reluctant to the point of outright refusal. (It may be illegal to step over a fence but it's also illegal to tie up a gate across a public right of way so I don't see what their problem was.) Fortunately the farmer came out of his nearby house and invited the remainder of the group to use the gate at the top end of the field which had also been tied up with twine but was easier to undo. While all that was going on I was getting some welcoming sniffs of my hand from the shaggy horse whose field it was.

The chap who organises the walks is very interested in old mines so after stopping for lunch above the mine we made a diversion to view the culvert that had been constructed to run a water wheel to power the mine workings. One of the group pointed out that this was part of a less than glorious past when miners often died by 40 from the dangerous and toxic conditions and children also worked in the mines.

Then down the hill to see the ruined mine buildings with a scramble up over the steep spoil heap of small slate chippings followed by more scrambling down the other side of the heap. I followed a couple of fellow walkers who'd been that way before and skipped the final slide down the spoil heap by simply walking along the field above it.

Eventually we made our way up the other side of the valley. The black specks in the sky are red kites, a group of which were lazily circling in a thermal. One of them came low and close but never long enough for me to get a decent photo.

From there it was an easy walk back down along the road and through the village to the cars.

When I got home Peter was out, although it was too rough to go out for a row they had been trialing the new trolley they've had made for getting the boat down the beach to the water. The old one was falling apart and Peter was able to get the design for the type they used in Devon which is easier to use. A bonus when you have a steep slipway and soft sand to go across. By the time he got home it was time for a relaxing evening watching Strictly.