It's farewell to Wales after a trip on the funicular tramway up the Great Orme, a giant lump of rock to the north of Llandudno forming a headland about two miles long, where the Irish Sea stretches to the horizon, the Snowdonia Range marches away to the south, and the wildlife are free to be as wild as they like.
I can't really leave Wales without a trip to the Bodnant Garden, reputed to be up there with the best. And indeed it is. The site slopes away to the River Hiraethlyn and beyond. The areas around the house are a feast of terraces, lawns, lily ponds on an enormous scale, walls, steps, flower beds, wonderful old trees and a celebrated Laburnum Arch that draws photographers from all points of the globe in the springtime, when its pannicles of wisteria like blooms hang in a yellow festoon from the curved tunnel.
As you strike out for the river the garden looses its formality and the path meanders through shrub borders, trees and paths of mown grass until you reach an impressive Mausoleum in its own little garden.
Then down some steps to a tinkling stream with ferns and all manner of greenery around. Eventually the stream joins the river just above a man-made waterfall. A bridge crosses at this point to the opposite bank where the path heads off to the old mill through a glade of stately California Redwoods.
Another bridge and a climb uphill where the path must be a delight in the springtime, flanked as it is by Camellias and Rhododendrons.
A stroll around the Lily Terrace and the Rose Terrace then I'm off to a B&B at Kidderminster in Worcestershire before setting sail for Suffolk on the morrow.
A word of advice for any of my female readers who fancy setting up a Bed and Breakfast establishment to make a few quid on the side: don't go away for the weekend and leave your husband in charge. And please, try to site your B&B on a road that actually appears on a map!
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