I saw my fourth full moon briefly last night in a crack of the angry sky which unleashed torrents of rain through the night. This had one benefit. On my trip up the Ffestiniog Railway the waterfalls were full and fabulous just before Blaenau which is as far into the mountains as the lovely narrow gauge railway goes. This was the centre of the local slate industry and was why the railway was built. It was raining at first but remarkably cleared at the top. There was water all over the place but this landscape can cope with it all and in the end it just disappears into the sea. The walk to Harlech was fabulous across a toll bridge, round a sea wall on the edge of the marsh to Ynys, a tiny village which used to be a port to provide materials and fuel for Harlech. There were great views across to Portmeirion which looks very good across the Dwyryd Estuary. It was only a few miles then along the main road to Harlech with its castle on a massive rock looking back at Criccieth Castle on its cone shaped rock. I met Bill Pritchard at the end of Evensong at St. David's, Barmouth. He had kindly offered me hospitality so I had hopped on a bus at Harlech and will return there tomorrow. I'm finding out a lot about the area from Bill who is a keen observer from having been a journalist and before that 15 years in the Merchant Navy and oddly was at the same school as me in Taunton where he had only stayed one week where as I stayed for 8 years! Barmouth is Birmingham-on-sea and is 80% English - so too is Harlech, though the laird chooses to live in Shropshire. The local school in Harlech is Welsh speaking with most of the pupils coming in from the surrounding villages. The result is that those English who can afford it send their children away to school. I was disturbed when I was passed by some youths, one of which kicked a bottle into the school grounds. 'It's OK' he said, 'It's my school'. It made me feel very uneasy.