A few days in mid Wales

 Here we are outside the cottage on the very sunny last morning, just to prove that the sun did come out while we were away.  It had a lovely view over the fields in a charming and very historic village near Machynlleth called Pennal.  Owain Glyndwr wrote his letter to the Pope from there.

 Here is Brian enjoying very, very nice ice cream in Aberdyfi despite the winter coat and hat.

 The is the beach in Aberdyfi which is acres of sand and dunes.

 We went to the RSPB reserve at Ynys Hir where they filmed Springwatch last year and are going to be back there in a couple of weeks.  It is a beautiful spot on the Dyfi estuary with views for miles, and as the bluebells were out in the woods that was lovely too.  We went to the Dyfi Osprey Project (link is here) which has nesting ospreys and full 24 HD film cover and we saw Norah (mother bird) sitting on the nest and it is just amazing!  We also saw what must have been Monty (daddy bird) flying around too.

 This is Aberdyfi in the sunshine, which we got by  late Friday.  We were there Wednesday till Saturday, and it was pretty damp most of the time.  Cold as well, but we had a really good time.  We went to the Centre for Alternative Technology which was really interesting.  However for normal people all these saving the planet things do come in very expensive so I can't see me installing solar power or wind pumps anytime soon. 

We went for a walk to somewhere called Llyn Barfog which was uphill over a few walls with these ladder stiles but was lovely when we got there.

We had a real problem finding decent coffee for some reason.  Lots of cafes but the best coffee sadly was out of a machine in the Bird reserve.  So although we got 5 stars for ice cream, it got 1 star for coffee.