Llyn Bodlyn & Diffwys, Dyffryn Ardudwy, Gwynedd, Wales

My first ever exploration of the hinterland of Cadair Idris had me gazing towards the hills that lay to the north on a day when a pattern of brightness and shadow was overlaid across the countryside. It was to take me a few years before I started to make any inroads into the countryside around those northern summits and even to walk up onto them. The photo shows how Diffwys looks from the north in a scene captured while making an ascent of Y Llethr. Though it might seem hard to believe from here, the countryside on the other side of the rounded Diffwys is less wild in feel than that where I was walking the juxtaposition of both it and Llyn Bodlyn caught my attention. This is a part of Wales that possesses glorious emptiness akin to what can be found in many places in Scotland, and it is wonderfully and under-thronged too; most head for the coast, leaving the hills to themselves and they only a few miles away.