David Williams Political Editor BBC Wales

It was a perfect day in the mountains. Clear blue skies, snow-capped peaks and firm frost underfoot.

A perfect day to abandon the political trail and embark instead on a physical hike through the wonders of the Snowdonia National Park.

It was an invitation which Rhodri Morgan, Wales' First Minister and the leader of the Labour party in Wales, couldn't resist.

After a week touring key seats in the forthcoming Assembly election, he broke away from the political itinerary and joined me for a short walk on the Miners path towards the foot of Snowdon.

Rhodri Morgan wants to get fitter

In political terms, Mr Morgan is regarded as something of a political mountain himself.

For the moment he seems unassailable, but his leadership will be put to the test during Labour's quest for an overall majority in the May assembly election.

That's for the future.

In the clear air above Pen-y-pass, he surveyed a different landscape and declared it: "Stunning, just stunning."

The invitation to Rhodri Morgan and the other political leaders in Wales is to share their wider interests with us is an attempt to discover, what the late Roy Jenkins called, the politician's hinterland.

Rhodri Morgan wasn't sure what that rather "posh" phrase meant, but he agreed that it was too easy to become absorbed with politics to the detriment of other interests.

You have to make sure that you don't allow tiredness - which is inevitable in politics - to become staleness Rhodri Morgan, Assembly First Minister

"Politics shouldn't take over your life," he told me. So, what would he be doing if he wasn't so heavily engaged in running the country?

Woodcarving, that's what!

The first minister has several large pieces of a tree trunk seasoning in his garage which he is just dying to get hold of an transform into a coffee table or garden furniture!

He's quite serious about this, but it's unlikely that he will wield a mallet and chisel in the near future.

He has other more pressing political matters to carve up.

Rhodri Morgan has urged people in Wales to get fit

In the meantime, he considers running and walking a good substitute for his real love.

Now aged 63, he's still fit, but has pledged himself to getting fitter in 2003.

Walking at a brisk pace - I'm a little younger than him - in the winter sunshine, he told me that he had only once managed to reach the summit of Snowdon.

He had never walked up Cader Idris and it was his ambition to trample over a lot more of Wales, if he could only free himself from the political tread mill.

'Ability to communicate'

How much longer then did he envisage going on in politics?

"It depends on your health,' he told me. And added: "It's not a matter of age, it's a matter of your health and how you feel about what you can still contribute as a politician.

"You have to make sure that you don't allow tiredness - which is inevitable in politics - to become staleness.

"If this happens you lose your ability to communicate and spark off what the people of Wales are looking for."

And with that he had to turn around and head back to his waiting political bandwagon.

His aides were insistent that he was running late for the next appointment. Another five minutes and we would have rounded a corner which afforded a stunning view of Snowdon.

The search for Mr Morgan's hinterland had proved more difficult than we had envisaged.

It was a case of the politician who went up a hill and came down without seeing the mountain. Pity that!