And things really did go bump on the night of Hallowe'en as I'll explain later.

The inspiration for spending the night atop one of Wales' most breathtaking mountains arose while we were putting together the Haunting Tales from Mid Wales special publication that is in the shops now.

Among many other unusual stories we were told that if you spend the night on Cader you'll come down either mad or a poet.

One of the lads at work suggested we "get a party of us" together to test this out. Despite two dates being set the party dwindled down to myself and my good mate and training partner at AJ Judo Club here in Welshpool, Nick Huband.

We left for Cader after I'd finished work on the Thursday, so we set off from the car park at dusk. Our only companions were my labrador cross dog, Dougal, and my mum's unbearably lively collie/lab cross Willow.

By the time we reached the final drag up to the summit it was already dark and windy and there was snow everywhere. The stone refuge was covered in snow (see right) and it has no door.

After cooking our supper it was straight into our sleeping bags as the temperature plummeted towards minus 15 and icy blasts of foggy air kept blowing in.

After some of the snow had cleared from one of the windows we had a bit of a surprise when a white face appeared to be looking in (see picture, right).

Over cups of coffee from our flasks we set the world to rights then dozed off.

At about 2am we were rudely awoken by a thundering noise on the tin roof. "What the hell's that," we both said.

Slowly the realisation dawned that it was my mother's over-excited dog who had somehow managed to get up on the roof!

In spite of a disrupted and cold night, we were ready to walk in the snow after breakfast the next morning. And we were treated to superb views as we walked the three mountain tops. As you can see from above, once the fog parted when we reached Mynydd Moel it was magical.

I hope Dylan Thomas will forgive me for filching a couple of his lines (above) but the first line genuinely came to me as we were walking up to the snowy summit guided only by our head torches.

My brother read the full poem out at my father's funeral after he'd lost a very brave fight against cancer.

Were we mad? I'll let you decide that. We had a great couple of days in the hills, I think other people are mad to miss out on such an experience.

A word of warning: Nick and I have had many trips into the Welsh mountains and were well equipped. Please make sure you are if you head for the hills this winter.