This really is a holiday with a difference!

Everyone that visits Bardsey Island agrees that it is a magical place, an island somehow out of time and blessed with wonderful wildlife and peace. We have hundreds of visitors every year who also say that that they would like to stay on the island. Here is an opportunity, a stay on the island for one week beginning the 23rd of June 2017, hosted by the Journeying organisation and which doesn't commit you to taking a full house.

The party will stay in Cristin House which is part of the Bird Observatory. This is a spacious house and comfortably appointed. Catering will be shared but with planned menus. Everyone will be expected to help out, something which the organisers call hands-on hospitality - a term I expect to reuse next time my relatives come to stay!

£600 will buy you a shared room, station transport from Pwllheli, the boat crossing and all accommodation and food (£720 for a single room or single occupancy in a twin/double room). Full details can be found on www.journeying.co.uk, tel: 01646 279 478, email: info@journeying.co.uk.

Oil Rush in Aberdaron?

 Recent visitors to Aberdaron may have been surprised to see an enormous drill in the National Trust car park. Rather than drilling for oil it is actually to extract a much more environmentally friendly form of energy - ground source heat to supply the self catering apartments at Henfaes. The deepest borehole dug so far is 210 meters in depth. Once the boreholes are all finished the lengths will add up to 800 metres in total to extract heat energy from deep in the ground where there is always a constant temperature.

You can just make out the drill shaft rapidly spinning.

The drill is an impressive sight from ground level.

One of the steel pipes being winched into place to presumably be fed down the hole.

This is probably the pipework which will carry down cold water to be warmed up deep below the ground and returned to the surface.

It looks like there are lots more pipes to be sent down.