Would you believe it was a long while before we had the time to go out again. Funny how busy you can be when you are trying to avoid something. And there our beautiful canoe rested in the eaves of our garage for months at a time. We did manage a short trip up the western arm of Llys y Fran Reservoir, amazing bird life! and we had another trip on the Teifi seeing our first otter and picnicking on the river bank. Problem was we were still getting so tired in a short space of time and any team work eluded us. Also the - grade 1 (?) rapids were a worry.

Every now and then Josh would remind us of the canoe courses at Plas y Brenin, this far off place he'd been to on a navigation course in the spring. He'd show us the brochure and we'd have a read and promptly become very busy again. After all he was still having problems settling back into work after his five day course. We weren't sure if it was the water or the cake. Some thing was definitely different and he was no longer content to sit at a computer for six or seven hours a day, (don't know why!) and only location photography really interested him.

Then having cycled over the Pyrenees in late summer he decides he's going back up to PYB to do the Fast Track Instructors Course. This outdoor life was becoming a real addiction. It was the nudge we needed to find out for ourselves just what they did to these poor unsuspecting people in this so called Centre in deepest Snowdonia. Well somebody had to save them, and so we booked ourselves in.

By the time our course had started we had already visited PYB twice before. We had walked up Snowdon in the middle of January, and had taken Josh some new music up a couple of months later. We were now addicted ourselves! Plas y Brenin is an amazing place, it buzzes with energy from the most determined of people, young and not so young. It is set in the most awesome of places and makes me so proud to be Welsh, and here we were about to take the plunge somewhat literally . . .