Those of you who have been reading this column for some time (back issues are always online) know that I have been trying to give some idea of what really goes on at Mill Grove. More precisely, how what happens relates to a philosophy of care and part of a therapeutic environment. We do not have treatment programmes and therapeutic plans, but we do believe that over time “God-given rhythms and patterns can provide a therapeutic context in which the deepest personal and social wounds can be healed, and creative growth and expression encouraged”. Because half-term is part of the British yearly pattern of life (though not as far as I know, God-given) I thought I would describe what’s been going on this week, and leave you to see how far it makes sense in relation to the quotation from our leaflet about Mill Grove.

Four of us set off on Monday evening for North Wales where we have a terraced house in the little harbour village of Borth-y-Gest. One of the young people with me is over twenty, and seeking employment, having failed to keep her job at a local riding stable in Essex. The other two are a brother and sister whose mother stayed at Mill Grove while we were away.

After a straightforward journey of 250 miles and a good night’s sleep, Sandra (that’s what I will call her for the purposes of this column) rang up the stables where she helps out at holiday time and arranged to lead a ride that very day. The next two days she went with the owners of the stables to a horse sale in Aberystwyth and came back absolutely thrilled, having witnessed the purchase of a four-year-old gelding called Blaze. Every aspect of the week for her was confidence-boosting, full of meaning, and accepting relationships.

The other three of us (I will call the two youngsters Janet and John) were happy to run Sandra to the stables on the first day, but then got on with planning how we would spend our three full days in Snowdonia together. The first day we walked across the saltings alongside the Cob (built by Maddocks to link Meirionethshire and Caernarvonshire) and round the headland into the italianate village of Portmeirion.

There we spent a good while in a bookshop before enjoying ice-cream and a cream tea in one of the restaurants. We later cooked a three-course meal together: Nachos covered in melted cheese, spaghetti bolognaise, and Angel Delight and pineapple, followed by hot drinks. In the evening we walked along Black Rock Sands by the light of a nearly full moon before getting some chips at our favourite local haunt. Sandra, who joined us for the evening decided she would run the length of the Cob (exactly a mile) to help the chips down!

On the Wednesday we set off for the Centre for Alternative Technology near Machynlleth, and spent the best part of the day exploring proven methods of saving energy, harnessing wind, solar and water power, gardening effectively, and pausing to reflect on the damage our industrialised way of life is inflicting on the environment. The two youngsters drank in this new perspective on life, and it seemed to me that their worldviews might have undergone a paradigm shift as a result of their experience. (I have been a regular visitor to the Centre since it opened and it has been one of the reasons for my critical take on westernisation and the like.)

In the evening, after a meal of curry and egg fried rice, Janet settled down at my laptop to do some geography homework and in the process helped me to see some of the potential of Excel, while John and I played chess before we headed out into what was becoming a very stormy night.

The moon was full and clear, and the wind was blowing a gale from the south. The Spring tide was as high as we had ever seen it, and the wind was whipping the water over cars and garden walls. A mooring buoy had come adrift, and two boats, one of them a fine sailing dinghy were being battered on the rocks at the western edge of the harbour. There was nothing we could do about the boats, so we walked along the coast path taking in the extraordinary combination of fast moving clouds, the wind whistling through the trees, the racing waves and the silver gleam of the moonlight on the heaving water. We both knew instinctively that this was a night to remember.

Overnight the storm blew itself out, and so on the Thursday in bright sunshine we made for some local hills between Cwm Penant and the Aberglaslyn where we strolled along an escarpment before seeking out little rocks and crags and doing some elementary scrambling (you would call it bouldering if you were a little more advanced).

If you had been watching us there would have been little upon which to remark, but for John it was an occasion that marked one of the biggest breakthroughs in his physical development to that date. Suddenly we realised why he had such difficulty on any uneven ground, and why he was terrified of slopes and mountains: he could not trust either foot enough to put his weight on it, and thus make progress. Once this difficulty was identified and he found that either of his legs really could take his weight, he took off, and was quickly up ledge after ledge. Janet enjoys scrambling immensely and so she kept herself amused on some rather more demanding outcrops.

We reached a summit of sorts where we paused to have lunch, using binoculars to study aspects of the Lleyn Peninsula (including Yr Eifl, which the English call The Rivals), Bardsey Island, and a postman threading his way past wayward sheep in a red van as he wended his way from one isolated farmhouse to the next. Time virtually stopped still. Eventually we walked back to the car and told a serial story as we went. I rather lost the plot but it encompassed just about every novel, TV series and film I had ever heard of and was located within a time span of about 100,000 years from now and with spasmodic visits to far-flung galaxies.

The evening was spent making a barbecue beside Black Rock using driftwood. It’s a favourite spot, rarely frequented by visitors, with plenty of fuel, and with increasingly fine views along the coast from Criccieth as the light fades and the lights come on. Despite the dampness of the wood we made a lively fire, and cooked sausages, onion rings and beef cutlets, washed down with Sprite and Irn Bru. It was a pity to have to leave the fire when a light drizzle persuaded us to return to the house. Sandra was back for the evening and we finished the quick Daily Telegraph crossword together before she tried cooking marshmallows in chocolate as a way of extending the barbecue indoors.

And then on Friday we tidied the house, had a cooked breakfast of everything remaining, and drove back to London musing between music on CDs and radio on the great time we had all had.

I won’t spoil the half-term by trying to explain how it fits the notion of a therapeutic context in which wounds can be healed and creative growth and expression encouraged. I hope you can do this for yourself. I just want to record that I found the whole time thoroughly enriching and relaxing. I didn’t get all the writing done that I had intended to do, including this column, but I did manage a foreword for a book by the deadline. I felt it was a privilege to be with three young people who were getting so much out of life when so many of their early life-experiences had been so unpromising and even destructive.