Saturday afternoon was the first really beautiful warm day here in England. Most of the country was bathed in sunshine and warmth. It felt like the first day of summer, a perfect day to get out onto the open road with the hood down on my MG.

My girlfriend ‘Posh‘ (otherwise known as Rachel) and I headed across the border into Wales just after lunch, looking for the winding roads leading to the beautiful ‘Horseshoe pass,’ a road that is as notorious as it is beautiful. The road was wide open though with only a handful of people sharing the same idea as us so it was perfect.

As I drove the ‘stick shift’ British racing green car along the road that snaked its way through the beautiful countryside of Wales, I smiled to myself as I realised that I was actually living the hopes of a young Simon who used to look longingly at open-top sports cars when he was a kid. Back then the possibility of actually having one seemed like a dream, but here I was in Wales on a beautiful afternoon with the hood down enjoying the warmth of the sun and the open road – great stuff!

We stopped and went for a short walk along one of the hillsides on the horseshoe path. I snapped a few pictures, but pictures do little to capture this awesome scene. We both commented that the weather was uncharacteristically hot for this time of year, feeling more like a summer’s day than a day in March.

We drove on and headed off the main road onto the back roads before stopping and going for a longer walk along a fast-flowing ice-cold river. Lambs were bounding around the fields partly curious of us and partly wary of us. A little further on down the road we came to the tiny village of Glyndyfrdwy with its historic railway station that stood still in time, a monument to a bygone era. The steam trains still run along the tracks here in the summer months, these days it’s a tourist attraction rather than a practical means of transport.

Eventually, we rolled into the steam train town of Llangollen. We had a drink in an old mill-house pub on the edge of the river. We sat for a while outside slowly sipping our drinks as the sky dipped behind the foothills of the Snowdonia mountain range. Then eventually we headed off again in search of something to eat, which is always difficult, to say the least. After a while, we sat down to eat in the town of Ruthin before heading back to England.

It was a really great way to spend a beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon, the first time I’ve been able to really enjoy warm sunny weather in my MG. I’m looking forward to many more such days as the summer approaches.