The first trail we set off for in the Waterville Valley was our absolute favourite, Smartsbrook, where a mountain stream comes tumbling down likely carrying water from the Sandwich Mountains above where the trail turning into the Yellowjacket trail has leads up those mountains, difficult ascents that we took with our children many years ago.

On this first visit the day after we arrived at the cottage we rent at the Shamrock, we accessed the Smartsbrook trailhead, then climbed to the modest height of the Pine Flats trail which ends where the Yellowjacket begins the long circuit that now in our 80s takes us about two-and-half-hours to complete. We left the circuit for another tryst on the trail, three days later. We were resting up from our arduous efforts of the day before, driving from home to the Waterville Valley, settling in, unpacking, then going off again to do grocery shopping for our week's stay.

Throughout our week-long adventure our two little dogs, Jackie and Jillie were superbly well behaved. They adjusted quickly to our new surroundings, and were perfect little companions for us throughout all the trails we took up modest slopes and through seemingly semi-tropical forests where mountain lakes and streams keep the atmosphere perpetually damp as attested by the richness of mosses and lichens to be found everywhere.

In successive days we would drive over to other trails and geological sites that we wouldn't want to miss. After being closed for remedial work for the past year-and-a-half we were able finally to access Sabbaday Falls, a spectacularly beautiful, fiercely tumbling waterfall. We'd done its trail decades earlier and had no intention of repeating it this time around, spending our time marvelling at the natural wonder the falls present.

From there we went on to the Rocky Gorge State Park, a wonderfully grand granite waterway rapidly making its way down mountain slopes yet again. They were both accessed off the Kancamagus highway. We enjoyed renewing our acquaintance with the landscape there, but our real intention was to embark on a hike around Falls Pond, a lovely little lake on the valley floor that takes us on a mile-long roundabout the lake, through mature forest.

We drove back through Franconia Notch on yet another day, to go along to the Basin, where the granite has been scoured into bowls from the continuous force of the mountain stream ferociously spilling off the Cannon mountainside, streaming down to the Pemigewasset River below, to clamber up the trail leading to a series of at the various levels where the route of the stream races over a bare granite raceway inviting anyone to stop and rest and take advantage of the opportunity to view the surrounding forest, the view of the mountains opposite, the course of the water over the granite and around erratics in a spectacular show of nature's force.