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Ten miles inland from Aberystwyth, at Bwlch Nant yr Arian Forest Visitor Centre, red kites are fed every afternoon, at three o'clock in summer and two in winter. Fifty or more birds usually come in, low over the lake below the terrace, so you watch them from above rather than squinting upwards.

Back on the coast, Borth has two miles of flat sand at the northern end. Tresaith has a river that drops onto the beach in a waterfall. At Llangrannog you can walk round the rock stack at low tide, so check when the tide turns before you set off.

The red kite was very nearly lost from Britain. By the end of the nineteenth century the birds had been shot, trapped and poisoned out of England and Scotland. The only ones left anywhere were in the hills of mid Wales.

The number that survived was tiny. In the early 1900s about five pairs were hanging on in the remote country of the upper Tywi. DNA work later showed that every one of them descended from a single female.

Protection began in 1903. Professor J. H. Salter of Aberystwyth wrote a letter that was read out at the British Ornithologists’ Club, and the first Kite Committee was formed to guard the surviving nests. It is often described as the longest continuously running conservation programme in the world.

Progress was painfully slow. The population did not pass twenty pairs until the 1960s, and it took farmers, landowners and volunteers watching the same nests every breeding season to get it that far.

It worked in the end. Kites are common over Ceredigion now, and you will see them from the road without trying.

The best place to watch them is Bwlch Nant yr Arian Forest Visitor Centre, ten miles inland from Aberystwyth on the A44. Kites are fed there every afternoon, at three o'clock in summer and two in winter, and fifty or more birds usually come in.

The feeding ground is a lake below the terrace, so the birds come in underneath you rather than overhead. The Arian and Melindwr walking trails are waymarked from the centre, and the café at the visitor centre looks straight down on the feed. Mountain bikers get the Pendam, the Summit and the 21-mile Syfydrin, which is graded severe.

The coast fills the other half of a week. Borth has two miles of flat sand. At low tide the stumps of a drowned oak and pine forest show through it, taken by the rising sea about four thousand years ago. The sand runs a long way out there and the tide comes back across it quickly, so keep an eye on it.

Tresaith has a river that tips off the cliff onto the beach. Llangrannog has a rock stack you can walk around at low tide, though check when the tide turns before you set off. Ynyslas, at the mouth of the Dyfi, is dunes and estuary and a National Nature Reserve.

Ceredigion is quieter through August than the Pembrokeshire coast, which starts across the river at Cardigan. The county runs sixty-five miles top to bottom, so Aberystwyth to Cardigan is a good hour on the coast road. From any one base, though, most of what you would want is inside half an hour.