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

The Horseshoe Pass

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

Walk across Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, completed in 1805 by Thomas Telford and William Jessop, 307m long and 39m above the River Dee, the longest aqueduct in Great Britain and the highest canal aqueduct in the world; UNESCO listed in 2009

Take a canal boat trip on the Llangollen Canal that crosses it

Visit the Horseshoe Falls, the weir at Llangollen that feeds the canal

Thomas Telford and William Jessop took ten years to design and build the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, finished in 1805: a cast-iron trough carrying the Llangollen Canal 39m above the Dee on eighteen hollow masonry piers, 307m long, the longest aqueduct in Britain and the highest canal aqueduct in the world. The mortar was made with lime, water and ox blood. A towpath runs along one side of the trough, and the canal is fed from the Horseshoe Falls, the weir on the Dee above Llangollen. It has been a World Heritage Site since 2009.

Pontcysyllte: The Aqueduct 39 Metres Above the Dee

Walk St Peter's Square and the medieval town houses

Visit Nantclwyd y Dre, among the oldest timber town houses in Wales

Ruthin takes its name from the red sandstone its castle was cut from — rhudd din, the red fort — begun in 1277 by Dafydd, brother of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, and forfeited when he rebelled against Edward I. Castle Street keeps Nantclwyd y Dre, one of the oldest timber-framed town houses in Wales, and the Clwydian hills rise behind it to the Jubilee Tower on Moel Famau.

Ruthin and the Clwydian Range

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 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

In the well crypt, look up at the carved boss above the spring, which shows six scenes from the life of St Winefride

Bathe in the pools at the permitted times: by tradition, pilgrims pass three times through the small pool by the spring while saying a decade of the Rosary, then kneel on St Beuno's stone in the outer pool

Find out which kings came as pilgrims: Richard II in 1398, Henry IV in 1403 after the Battle of Shrewsbury, and, according to the poet Tudur Aled, Edward IV

Compare the flow of the spring with Samuel Johnson's 1774 diary, which claimed 'one hundred tuns of water in a minute', and the 1859 measurement of 22½ tons a minute

The holy well at Holywell in Flintshire has drawn pilgrims since the Middle Ages, and it is the only sacred site in Britain whose pilgrimage tradition carried on unbroken through the Reformation. Legend says the spring rose where Winefride's head fell when Prince Caradoc beheaded her, and that St Beuno, her teacher, restored her to life, leaving only a thin white line around her neck.

St. Winefride's Well: The Lourdes of Wales

Walk the almost complete two-mile circuit of Chester's city walls, the most complete in Britain

See the Roman Amphitheatre, the largest in Britain

Visit the Grosvenor Museum and its Roman tombstones

Walk the Rows, Chester's medieval two-tier galleries of shops, and see the Eastgate Clock

Chester's walls run an almost complete two-mile circuit round the old city, the most complete in Britain. Inside them the Rows are medieval two-tier galleries of shops, with the Eastgate Clock over the street, and just outside is the largest Roman amphitheatre in Britain; the Grosvenor Museum keeps the Roman tombstones found in the city.

Chester: The Walls, the Rows and the Roman Amphitheatre

Look up at the Giant from the viewpoint below the hill

Walk up to the Trendle, the earthwork on the hill above the figure

Walk the village and the remains of Cerne Abbey

Find St Augustine's Well behind the abbey

The Cerne Abbas Giant is cut into the hillside above the village in trenches about two feet deep packed with crushed chalk: a naked man 55m long and 51m across, club in his right hand. He belongs to the National Trust, is a scheduled monument, and his age has long been argued over — prehistoric, Roman, or a 17th-century satire on Oliver Cromwell — though soil dating in 2021 points to the late Saxon period, between 700 and 1100 AD.

The Cerne Abbas Giant: 55 Metres of Chalk Man

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.