Drive or ride the climb to the summit of Bwlch y Groes

Find the cross at the junction below the top

Pick out Aran Fawddwy and Cadair Idris from the pass

Drop down the other side to Llyn Efyrnwy or Dinas Mawddwy

Bwlch y Groes, the pass of the cross, climbs to 545m between Llanuwchllyn and Dinas Mawddwy and is the second highest public road pass in Wales after the Gospel Pass. A cross stands just below the summit at the junction with the Lake Vyrnwy road, marking the pass's place on an old pilgrim route, and the view takes in the Dyfi valley, Aran Fawddwy and Cadair Idris.

Bwlch y Groes: The Pass of the Cross

Pistyll Rhaeadr and Bwlch y Groes

Three nights of high passes and one waterfall: the 73-metre fall of Pistyll Rhaeadr, Bwlch y Groes at 545m, and the Horseshoe Pass at 417m above Valle Crucis.

Welsh Passes: Bwlch y Groes, the Horseshoe and Pistyll Rhaeadr

Ride the Bala Lake Railway along the southern shore of Llyn Tegid, Wales's largest natural lake: a 4.5-mile, 600mm-gauge line that opened on 13 August 1972 and reached Bala in 1976

Go white-water rafting at the National White Water Centre on the Tryweryn near Bala

Llyn Tegid, Bala Lake, was the largest natural lake in Wales even before Thomas Telford raised its level to feed the Ellesmere Canal. It is the only native home of the gwyniad, a critically endangered whitefish, and a refuge population has been started in nearby Llyn Arenig Fawr. The Bala Lake Railway runs 4.5 miles along its southern shore on a 600mm-gauge line that opened in 1972 and reached Bala in 1976, and just outside the town the National White Water Centre runs rafting on the Tryweryn.

Bala: Llyn Tegid, the Gwyniad and the Tryweryn

From the pool at the base, photograph the full 73-metre fall of Pistyll Rhaeadr as it drops in three stages

From the foot of the falls, photograph the natural rock arch that the water pours through

At the viewpoint below the falls, copy into your journal George Borrow's description from Wild Wales (published 1862): "What shall I liken it to? I scarcely know, unless it is to an immense skein of silk agitated and disturbed by tempestuous blasts"

Pistyll Rhaeadr in the Berwyn Mountains of Powys falls in three stages down a 73-metre cliff of Ordovician mudstones and tuffs, pouring through a natural rock arch on the way. It is one of the Seven Wonders of Wales, named in an anonymous rhyme of the late 18th or early 19th century.

Pistyll Rhaeadr: The Silk Waterfall

Ride the trails at Coed y Brenin, the 9,000-acre forest near Dolgellau where races were first held in 1991; it has seven waymarked mountain bike trails, from short family loops to the 35km Beast

Ride one of the graded red routes through the forest

Walk or ride to the waterfalls on the Afon Mawddach in the forest

Coed y Brenin, 9,000 acres of forest north of Dolgellau, holds the first trails in Britain built specifically for mountain bikes, cut in the 1990s and still the benchmark: rocky, rooty and graded from family loops to the long black routes.

Coed y Brenin: Britain's First Purpose-Built Mountain Bike Centre

Climb Cadair Idris (Penygadair, 893m) above Dolgellau by the Minffordd Path

Look into Llyn Cau, the glacial cirque lake below the summit crags

Look out from the summit over Cardigan Bay and the Mawddach estuary; legend says anyone who spends a night up here comes down a poet or a madman

Cadair Idris rises above Dolgellau at the southern edge of Eryri, and its summit, Penygadair, is 893m. The Minffordd Path climbs past Llyn Cau, a glacial lake in the cirque below the summit crags, and the top looks out over Cardigan Bay and the Mawddach estuary. Legend says anyone who spends a night on the summit comes down a poet or a madman.

Cadair Idris: The Chair of Idris

Visit the Owain Glyndŵr Centre in the Parliament House, whose exhibition opens on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays

Come on a Wednesday for the market granted by Edward I's charter of 1291

Find the Royal House on the corner of the Garsiwn, where tradition says Dafydd Gam was held for trying to kill Glyndŵr

Stand under the clock tower at the crossroads, raised for Viscount Castlereagh's coming of age in 1873

Go round the galleries of MOMA Machynlleth beside the Tabernacle

Machynlleth, a market town in the Dyfi valley, was the seat of Owain Glyndŵr's Welsh parliament in 1404, and on that strength it calls itself the ancient capital of Wales, though it has never been officially recognised as one. Edward I's charter of 1291 granted it a market every Wednesday 'for ever', and the Wednesday market still runs. The Royal House on the corner of the Garsiwn is one of its medieval houses; tradition says Dafydd Gam was held there from 1404 to 1412 for trying to kill Glyndŵr, and that Charles I stayed in 1643. The clock tower at the crossroads, 23.7m high, was paid for by the townspeople to mark the coming of age of Viscount Castlereagh, heir of the Londonderrys of Plas Machynlleth, in 1873. Laura Ashley opened her first shop here in 1961, and MOMA Machynlleth shows modern art in and beside a converted Wesleyan chapel. North of the town the Centre for Alternative Technology, opened in 1973 in the Llwyngwern slate quarry, now opens only to booked groups, courses and events.

Machynlleth: Glyndŵr's Parliament Town

Walk the footway across Barmouth Bridge over the estuary

Cycle or walk the Mawddach Trail towards Dolgellau

Look across to Cadair Idris from the quay

Barmouth stands where the Mawddach meets the sea under Cadair Idris, and the railway crosses the estuary on a timber viaduct with a walkway beside the track. Across the bridge the old railway line is now the Mawddach Trail, about eight flat miles along the water from Morfa Mawddach to Dolgellau.

Barmouth and the Mawddach: The Bridge and the Estuary Walk

Drive the horseshoe bend up to the 417m summit

Walk the Eglwyseg limestone escarpment from the Panorama road

Visit the ruins of Valle Crucis Abbey below the pass

Find the Pillar of Eliseg in the field above the abbey

The A542 between Llangollen and Llandegla climbs round a great horseshoe bend between Llantysilio Mountain and Cyrn-y-Brain to 417m. Below it stand the ruins of Valle Crucis Abbey and the Pillar of Eliseg, a 9th-century cross shaft raised by a king of Powys.

The Horseshoe Pass: Over the Hills to Llangollen

Stop at the Rest and Be Thankful and find the inscribed stone that gave the pass its name

Look down Glen Croe at the line of the old military road

Walk a stretch of the old military road below the pass

At the head of Glen Croe the A83 reaches the pass the soldiers who built the military road in the 1740s named the Rest and Be Thankful — a stone inscribed with the words was set up around 1749. The old road still runs below the new one; it was a motor-racing hillclimb until 1970 and is now the diversion route when landslides shut the A83, and the slope above is so prone to them that the road is regularly closed.