A JURY yesterday retraced the steps the prosecution said unemployed gardener Howard Hughes took on the night he allegedly raped and murdered seven-year-old Sophie Hook.

The eight men and four women braved high winds and heavy rain as they toured 14 locations around the North Wales seaside towns of Llandudno and nearby Colwyn Bay with the judge and prosecution and defence lawyers from Chester Crown Court.

Mr Hughes, 31, denies twice raping Sophie and murdering her in Llandudno early on the morning of Sunday July 30 last year.

He did not accompany the group who spent several hours viewing the sites as the trial entered its second week.

The prosecution says Mr Hughes snatched the Cheshire youngster from a tent as she camped out overnight with her sister and cousin in the back garden of her uncle's home, raped and strangled her, and threw her body into the sea.

Yesterday, the jury made its way down a narrow, overgrown bridle path that runs behind the house, where witnesses say they saw Mr Hughes with his mountain bike that afternoon.

They went through the tall green wooden back gate, reconstructed from the original wood after being broken up for forensic examination, and saw a tent identical to the one in which the children camped that night.

Later, they saw the spot just over 900m away on the sloping, pebble-strewn beach on which Sophie's body was discovered near the Craig-y-don paddling pool on Llandudno promenade.

The jury were taken a derelict red-bricked building known as the Grange, on Nant-y-Gamar Road, across a field from the bridle path and a short distance from the sea front.

Mr Gerard Elias, QC, prosecuting, told the jury during his opening speech last Wednesday that it was here that local thief Jonathon Carroll saw Mr Hughes carrying a sack from which a leg was protruding.

He said that the rear of the building would have been a place where the assaults on Sophie could have taken place with little risk of discovery.

The jurors then visited a country lane nearby and saw the spot where police found Sophie's nightclothes.

Finally, the court group were shown Mr Hughes's home in Yerburgh Avenue, Colwyn Bay, where he lived with his mother. Then the convoy of vehicles returned to Chester, where the trial will continue today.