Get that loving feeling in Wales

It's almost half a century since The Dam Busters was filmed on Lake Vyrnwy, but I doubt Michael Redgrave and co would have felt anything other than at home today if they could walk into the foyer of the hotel that has stood for almost 150 years above the lake's tree-lined shore.

What Lake Vyrnwy (actually a huge Victorian dam rather than a genuine lake) lacks in vowels, its hotel makes up for in old-fashioned charm and slightly dog-eared luxury. Built in 1860, it commands a 24,000-acre estate of moorland and forest, as solitary as it is atmospheric. Liverpool is only 75 miles away, but it might as well be on another planet.

This is Montgomeryshire in mid-Wales, where even the name of the area gives you the sense of a place where they couldn't care less about fashions. The dark wood, well-trodden floral carpet and stuffed animals in the foyer would give Ian Schrager nightmares, while the only fusion on the restaurant menu is between plaincooked, comforting ingredients and a fine wine list.

Lake Vyrnwy is as quiet as it is unostentatious, silence wrapping itself around you as soon as you walk more than a few yards from the hotel, heading off on trails that snake for miles through the trees or over the Berwyn moors. As I stomped through the mulch on various forest walks, pheasants kept me company, the birds wandering alone or in little gamey gangs through the clustered trees, little balls of iridescent colour that occasionally broke into a three-yard dash if they thought I was looking at them funnily.

Some of the efforts on the sculpture trail along the river valley below the towering dam wall deserved funny looks, like the cast of The Lord of the Rings rendered in pale wood. But it's easy to forgive the odd aesthetic quirk when you're standing by a rushing stream in the middle of a Welsh wood (less so when you're looking at the twee offerings in the craft shops clustered near the dam).

But there's more to Lake Vyrnwy than major relaxation and minor arts and crafts. Generating adrenaline is a good excuse to lounge around afterwards, and the hotel can arrange for you to bounce over the moors on quad-bikes, climb or abseil on nearby pointy-up bits, white-water raft on mountain rivers or battle with trout on the calmer stuff in the lake.

After a late lunch spent admiring the shifting monochrome of the water through the restaurant's huge windows, I decided to go after some birds. Only clay ones, though, conscious that I was in a twitcher's paradise at the heart of one of the RSPB's major reserves, where red kite were the A-list spot rather than any celeb. The moors looked like something out of the The Hound of the Baskervilles as I trudged up to the shooting stations, silhouetted against the afternoon mist that slipped down the hillsides like a silver cloak. Things seemed elementary enough as my clay instructor John, a gamekeeper with a nice line in gun-slinging philosophy, did his best to get me on the right track. "God gave you that groove for shooting - nothing else," he told me, as he demonstrated how to nestle the shotgun into my shoulder.

More tips came as I blasted away over the next hour, culminating in an exhortation to treat my "going away" birds "like a rabbit running through the air" - an image startling enough that I considered using it to explain all my subsequent misses. No amount of expert advice could compensate for a lousy aim. The "going away" clays just kept on going, flying through the air to land unscathed out on the moor as I emptied both barrels over and over into the darkening sky. First-timer Jenny, meanwhile, was wreaking havoc with almost every shot. "Annie Oakley!" her husband cried proudly as yet another clay shattered into countless pieces, mirroring the state of my male ego.

I was glad the chef was more on the mark as I ate dinner a couple of hours later, a lone "smart casual" among tables of suits and cocktail dresses where the talk was as much about golf in Spain or second houses in Portugal as "local" matters. Nothing wrong with "local", mind. "Local" meant low-key service from staff short on smug twentysomethings and high on fortysomething ladies. "Local" meant slumping after dinner with your coffee in the dark-wood panelled bar, deciding whether you had the energy to roll a dice or lift a card in the oldschool games on offer.

On my last afternoon, I headed for the antiques-filled lounge where a crackling fire made little highlights on the tea services and couples slumped cosily in well-worn chairs. Outside, the light played on the lake, picking out the old water tower standing on one bank like a miniature fairy-tale castle.

"You're not going to tell Londoners about this place," wailed one elegant lady politely after we'd got chatting. "We've been coming for years. It's our secret."

"I'll say it's a long way to come," I mumbled apologetically. And it is quite a hike. Other than that, the secret's out.

Way to go

Lake Vyrnwy Hotel (01691 870 692, www.lakevyrnwy.com) has doubles from £80 B&B a night; three-course dinner £27.50. Norman Miller travelled to Welshpool with Virgin Trains (08457 222 333; www.virgin.com/trains), returns from £15 (Virgin Value 7 fare - minimum seven-day advance purchase). Taxi to Lake Vyrnwy with Yellow Cabs (01938 55 55 33) £20 each way; advance booking essential.

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