Its a beautiful sunny Sunday morning and the sun is quickly drying the dew that is covering my tent and the grass. I so enjoy my ground coffee made in my travelling drip cone and am eating rather disgusting chocolate hazelnut filled brioche type croissants. Feeling frazzled (I wrote that but can’t remember why) and then rode off on part of one of the Bikers’ Britain routes. But first to visit Portmeirion, which I know as the film set for The Prisoner which I watched on TV in the late 1960s and then later bought on DVD. It was such a clever series. The place was heaving with tourists from far and wide but it hassuch a good mechanism to deal with large numbers of visitors that it feels pleasant and uncrowded. I took very many photos. The place is highly photogenic.

Then after a couple of hours I carried onward in a westerly direction on the BB route, but it was disappointing. There were lots of cars and the going was slow. It was a Sunday afternoon, afterall. I reached Abersoch and, in a busy seaside resort, found a parking place just for me and sat watching the sea and people sailing boats for a while. The estuary is so shallow that I saw one boat being towed out by a tractor.

I returned toward Portmadog on the same route and dropped into a Lidl – or was it Aldi? – and bought more ice and some other provisions. Its a simple but effective routine. What I mean is once my tent and other stuff is unpacked at a site I can use the waterproof roll-bag as a kind of portable fridge.

Back here in the campsite, I see that the noisy group have left – and feel more relief than I expected. When I left this morning their tents were surrounded by rubbish and two large incongruous wheelie suitcases. It must have been getting to me. And the grass has been mown, leaving a lovely smell and a strange sense of pleasure and satisfaction. Two nice lads who are walking the 100 mile Snowdonia and I chatted to one (the other didn’t seem communicative). They are very different to the young guys that were keeping us all awake last night. I complimented one of the walkers on a green top he was wearing… more on that in a later post.

I have a route for tomorrow via Bala to the second campsite near Oswestry, fresh ice, tonic water and a lime. My meat has thawed out from the freezer. But I learnt that mushrooms definately don’t freeze and that noodles probably don’t either. The Garmin unit is mostly working well though sometimes loses power as it started to do in Norway last year but seems to regain it so its ok. Using it again is so much less stress than the DMD unit. Which is another story, one I’ve already set down in detail.