I was up early and with a cup of tea and then a wholesome muesli concoction from Bill who enjoyed making sure I was at the station to catch the train to Tywyn. The tide was very high so I had to walk behind the sand dunes and over the golf course to Aberdovey. To cross the River Dovey Estuary would not be far but there is no ferry crossing or bridge. Waiting for the train up the estuary, I met a girl with her mother. She was travelling all the way back to London to pick up her GCSE results. I hope my history and geography students do OK! The train took me up to Machynlleth where I had 45 minutes to look around. After Hells Mouth Beach this was my second hippy experience. A beautiful place and a market is all you need to find people seeking an idealistic lifestyle. So many of the first generation look as bad as the Vietnam veterans, the American versions decided not to be. Their children now carry the ideal further in a more calculated and sensible way and are now giving birth to the third generation who will hopefully find the answer to saving the planet. Borth is a cowboy seaside town which I got to by train. Walking along, I came across a van in the road advertising haircut, massage, nail cutting and ear cleaning. I was intrigued so looked in at the open sliding door. There was Henry on a plinth on all fours grinning with his tongue hanging out. Henry was a dog! Now I was out of Gwynedd and into Powys. The mountains of Snowdonia have given way to a landscape more like Devon. This meant the walk to Aberystwyth was very up and down - beautiful to look at but hard to walk. Today the weather was supposed to get better but it got worse. Not just rain but thunder as well. The cliff path would have been awful but the road was, too and I felt uncomfortable as it bent through the hills. At the end of it I met a man coming the other way and felt compelled to warn him that it was very dangerous. 'I know', he said, 'I do it everyday!'. I'm enjoying Aberystwyth. Like Bangor it has a university and a hospital but in addition it houses the National Library and is a seaside town. I'm in what my landlady describes as a sort of hostel. She runs a building with a load of rooms by the seafront beneath which she also runs laundrettes. I'm out of travel soap so was able to borrow some washing powder to do my clothes washing which I generally do every other day. The seafront has been done up and I had a very passable pizza in a pub which was on what is left of the pier. There have been floods a days march further down the coast. Surely the weather can only get better.