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I doubt it’s spying, but it’s definitely doing some surveying or something ?
(Hopefully a picture will appear at some point )
is it a stealth aircraft?
LIDAR Survey.
LIDAR Survey.
what would they be surveying for though.
The areas they are doing are grass fields or forestry areas, quite hilly too. very little in the way of population although maybe a few 1000 sheep
Are we living on a load of buried gold ?
Unlikely to be spying at 2250ft. I remember seeing a refitted Dakota or DC-3 doing the same sort of regular surveying pattern off the Cornish coast a few years ago,a and that turned out to be looking for gravity anomalies, some sort of commercial hunt for potential geothermal power sources. Exactly that seems less likely in mid Wales, granted, but maybe something along those lines?
Edit - cross posted with the above 2 replies, but Lidar went through my mind too
Ordnance Survey have two aircraft that routinely do very similar flight patterns, it's just map survey work.
Might not be them in this instance but it'll basically be "aerial survey" for something or other.
what would they be surveying for though.
Its used to provide ultra detailed topographic maps. So could be seeing where best to stick some power lines or wind turbines or a million and one other things.
The Environment agency did the entire country to help them predict flooding etc, not sure if they update it from time to time, and made the dataset freely available. On the buried gold front archaeologists loved that since it works even better than the traditional dry summer and look for odd crop marks.
As above or Google maps/Earth or equivalent, always a flurry of planes doing such mapping when skies are clear
I'm guessing LIDAR as that gives a seriously detailed show of the actual ground.
Pity the aircraft registration isn’t showing, that would tell you who owns it and probably who’s operating it.
Geomagnetic survey?
LIDAR would be my guess. I buy LIDAR data in sometimes if a topographic survey is inappropriate. It's not bad. Not super accurate, but good enough at a large scale. You get the option to strip the trees off and get down to the ground only as they scan both.
The whole country will be LIDAR surveyed eventually. Most of it is already I think. Maybe Scotland has a fair bit to go though. Not sure.
England is fully LiDAR surveyed. Scotland is way far behind.
Lidar is just a huge bunch of reflection points what we use is a DTM in flood mapping. Significant processing to create a mesh surface. Ots pretty effective when you are looking at large scale flood mapping.
DSM includes all the high reflections so that makes a surface that will have all the lumps and bumps.
We tend to use it at 1m resolution. Not sure what we used for the flood mapping of scotland.
We have alos used it in conjunction with visible and non visible light imagery.
If you subtract the DTM from the DSM you identify all the lumps. If you see which lumps absorb Infrared. You probably have a tree. If your tree is in the footprint of a dam or flood/railway embankment for example. You have identified a potential risk.
England is fully LiDAR surveyed. Scotland is way far behind.
Lidar is just a huge bunch of reflection points what we use is a DTM in flood mapping. Significant processing to create a mesh surface. Ots pretty effective when you are looking at large scale flood mapping.
DSM includes all the high reflections so that makes a surface that will have all the lumps and bumps.
We tend to use it at 1m resolution. Not sure what we used for the flood mapping of scotland.
We have alos used it in conjunction with visible and non visible light imagery.
If you subtract the DTM from the DSM you identify all the lumps. If you see which lumps absorb Infrared. You probably have a tree. If your tree is in the footprint of a dam or flood/railway embankment for example. You have identified a potential risk.
Please forgive the literal screenshot
Scotland does have a bit to go. 
Wales fully done then? The OP's original question included the Welshpool area.
Forgive my slightly simple approach, but if you've got a spy aircraft surely you also have the ability for it to not show up on a publicly available flight tracker app/site. Suppose it could be hiding in plain sight.
My first thought was some kind of survey/mapping/science thing.
Jamiemcf. Its being done in phases in Scotland. Not sure the NLS map is fully up to date. The data is freely available from the Scottish remote sensing portal. Or in england throigh he defra site.
Quick install of QGIS and anyone can have a play.
I'm guessing that's flown over from Hawarden Airport which must be about 10 mins away as the crow (plane) flies. Seen that behaviour before - think there's a surveying service based out of there.
Thanks Josh. It's just a layer on that map that I never use. I was actually using the 1915 map locating culverts.
Played that game many times!
I find the 6 and 25inches the best as the watercourses are general colour washed in.
There's a whole host of old maps that I could get lost in exploring the past. I love a good map.