<p>In July 1798, a Cambridge student set out on a botanical tour and wrote the first guidebook to North Wales. Wearing spectacles and carrying a rucksack, Yorkshire-born William Bingley made notes, sketched and looked for rare plants. He befriended a Welshman with whom he made the first recorded rock climb in Britain on the north flank of Snowdon. Three years later they climbed the iconic mountain Tryfan. Bingley also helped establish the legend of the faithful hound Gelert.</p><p><br></p><p>In retracing Bingley''s steps through the historic counties of Flint, Denbigh, Caernarvon, Anglesey, Merioneth and Montgomery (as well as the town of Oswestry), the reader will discover a landscape and people of over two hundred years ago. They will clamber with Bingley up waterfalls, ride in a waggon into a candle-lit copper mine, sail on a cutter to Ynys Enlli, suffer the fleas at an inn in Beddgelert, ponder the necessity of taking a pint of rum up Snowdon, or blissfully rest in the shade of Mon