The third part of Harlech, which became the most important to us, was never visited by golfers or the few other summer visitors or by the village people themselves; this was the desolate rocky hill-country at the back of the village. As we grew older we spent more and more of our time up there and less and less on the beach and the links, which were the most obvious attractions of the place. There were occasional farms, or rather crofts, in these hills, but one could easily walk fifteen or twenty miles without crossing a road or passing close to a farm. Originally we went up there with some practical excuse. For the blue-berries on the hills near Maesygarnedd; or for the cranberries at Gwlawllyn; or to find bits of Roman hypocaust tiling (with the potter’s thumb-marks still on them) in the ruined Roman villas by Castell Tomenymur; or for globe-flowers in the upper Artro; or to catch a sight of the wild goats that lived at the back of Rhinog Fawr, the biggest of the hills of the next range; or to get raspberries from the thickets near Cwmbychan Lake; or to find white heather on a hill that we did not know the name of away to the north of the Roman Steps. But after a time we walked about those hills simply because they were good to walk about on. They had a penny plain quality about them that was even better that the twopence coloured quality of the Bavarian Alps. My best friend at the time was my sister Rosaleen, who was one year older than myself. I suppose what I liked about this country (and I know no country like it) was its independence of formal nature. The passage of the seasons was hardly noticed there; the wind always seemed to be blowing and the grass always seemed to be withered and the small streams were always cold and clear, running over black stones. Sheep were the only animals about, but they were not nature, except in the lambing season; they were too close to the granite boulders covered with grey lichen that lay about everywhere. There were few trees except a few nut bushes, rowans, stunted oaks and thorn bushes in the valleys. The winters were always mild, so that last year’s bracken and last year’s heather lasted in a faded way through to the next spring. There were almost no birds except an occasional buzzard and curlews crying in the distance; and wherever we went we felt that the rocky skeleton of the hill was only an inch or two under the turf. Once, when I came home on leave from the war, I spent about a week of my ten days walking about on these hills to restore my sanity. I tried to do the same after I was wounded, but by that time the immediate horror of death was too strong for the indifference of the hills to relieve it.