Rhiwddolion (pronounced ‘Rutholeon’) is a remote upland at the head of a valley above Betys-y-Coed. For a time there was a slate quarry and community here, but long before that Rhiwddolion was on the Roman road that runs from Merioneth to the Conwy valley, called Sarn Helen after the mother of Emperor Constantine. By the early twentieth century, the mines and quarries had closed and the miners drifted away to find employment elsewhere. Their cottages and chapel were left abandoned, until we rescued two cottages and the chapel. Now you share Rhiwddolion only with the sheep, a small scale landscape of oak trees and rocks surrounded by forest, silent and tranquil but for the sheep and the sound of its streams.

It is not possible to get a car to any of our three Landmarks. Instead, leaving your car by the forestry track, you walk up the valley (ten minutes, some say longer) on a path of enormous, half buried flagstones, just as your predecessors did.

Ty Capel, beside the stream that flows down the valley, was a school-cum-chapel in the days of the slate quarry. At the end of the nineteenth century the chapel served a community of 150 people.

Essentially a large single space, with a steep staircase up to the sleeping gallery, this robust stone building is lined with varnished pine, which, to an extent, helps to combat winter cold.

Sleeps: 3