We had a trip to Tregaron recently. I started it feeling very smug because our accommodation was next to a dark sky reserve and so the holiday started with a wonderful view of the aurora.

My smugness was not well-founded, though, since the whole of the rest of the UK apparently also saw the aurora, even with their eyes closed in floodlight rooms with no windows.

Nocturnal activity complete, the next day we went for a wander around Cors Caron nature reserve. It’s a raised peat bog, summarised quite nicely by Discover Britain: “Encompassing two thousand acres, it’s the biggest area of bog in Britain. It’s also the most intact surviving example of a raised bog in the whole of the United Kingdom.“

There are loads of Natural Resources Wales sites scattered around this area, all with free parking and nobody else around. Which suited us perfectly.

I also dragged Becs east one day, through the wilderness which is the Desert of Wales. I knew some of it from the Trans-Cambrian and Dragon’s Back but was keen to check out Soar y Mynydd chapel, the most remote in Wales.

From there we continued the wilderness drive past Llyn Brianne and through Rhandirmwyn, on to Cwm Rhaeadr. We did all the things there, namely took the dog for a walk then left him in the car and went for a run, then I left him and Becs in the car and went for a bike ride. The trail was apparently designed by Rowan Sorrell, now head trail builder at Bike Park Wales, and it’s absolutely brilliant. I will 100% be making a return journey at some point, even though it’s only 6.7 km in total and not really that near anything else.

On the drive home we came across a lady who had stopped her truck in the middle of the road and seemed to have lost her dog. It turned out she’d just seen someone dump two dogs on the country lane and drive off, and she was trying to coax them into the truck so she could take them to the vet. After an hour Becs’ best Dr. Doolittle impression eventually did the trick. I couldn’t persuade the lady to take Caesar as well, so we were stuck with him for the rest of the holiday.

The final trip was out to the coast again, specifically Penderi cliffs which is a South & West Wales Wildlife Trust site. We had a wander up and down, spotting a few seals but no dolphins.

The main event there though is, bizarelly, easily missed. There is an entire ‘forest’ clinging to the sheer cliffs above the shore, made of sessile oak that’s only a few feet tall. You could quite easily walk past without really noticing it, but once you find the path that goes in amongst it it’s quite impressive.

And thus we completed another mission to fill in one of the gaps in places we’ve visited in Wales. It wasn’t really intended as such (our trips nowadays are determined as much by the location of holiday cottages which will accommodate a geriatric dog as they are by where we actually have on the ‘to do’ list), but it’s not a bad way to spend a week.