We have managed it perfectly, and this tunnel curves slightly, so you can’t see really the end, and the other people don’t matter, because the glory is above and around us. And, it is like stepping in a scent bottle. Now, the end of May is time to see the laburnum arch – in fact more a tunnel, encasing us in gold. Which from the upper terrace have views of the mountains beyond. Dozens of Victorian graves (the railway arrived, and the tram still comes right up here) – they all rushed to be buried on this high holy spot, and services are still held today.

Today’s chapel is Victorian – they must have felt near heaven up here, looking down over the sea and across the bay. He retired to a hermitage here to redeem his father’s sins – King Seitherenun’s naughtiness caused a tidal wave to drown his kingdom in Cardigan Bay. We drive up and round the limestone hulk of the Great Orme, to the chapel of Saint Tudno, who is one of these 6 th century Celtic saints who spread from Cornwall and Britanny all over northern and western Britain. Places are called called Balmoral and Marlborough and Windsor. I think of the towns of north Wales as being tired and seedy, but here the houses & hotels & b & bs are bright – flowers and foreign students along the promenade, and way off across the sea an army of giant ghosts, a wind farm. Smart and stuffy, and fine, even with a back view, but they can only do us for two nights. The Imperial Hotel where Bob’s grandparents lived for a while.

So off we drove to north Wales, and after going through Llangollen on that ancient coach road to Holyhead we went through the Horseshoe Pass (why are views so uplifting, why is being reduced to an unimportant blip on the landscape so uplifting, and being reminded that one is nothing beside geological ages such a relief – maybe it’s that things just don’t matter, the earth will look after itself long term, and meanwhile I am part of it, fused into this body at the moment, but then off into molecules and atoms of everything else for eternity) and get to Llandudno.

Here and the Water by Sarah Coles