Rhobell Fawr

Tuesday 26th August 2008

With the weather much as it had been the day before, this was another day spent in clouds and getting wet. Instead of a wasted walk over one of the highest mountains in Wales I drove back to the area where I’d been walking on the previous Saturday and walked up to the top of Rhobell Fawr. This is a rather low hill, 730m, but covers a large area and I’m told has quite a striking appearance from a distance. I parked in the village of Llanfachreth and walked through woodland to a track that took me through a wonderfully colourful and picturesque valley, clad in purple heather.
 

At the top of the pass, Bwlch Goriwared, I turned right onto the open hillside and followed a wall heading east for several miles slowly climbing through the mist all the way up to the summit. Underfoot was bare grass rather than the lovely heather that I had passed earlier but the grass at least made the walk easier underfoot. This was not the best part of the walk as it was rather bleak and grim with just the wall beside me for company and open grasslands to my left. Eventually I reached the trig point and cairn at the wind-swept summit, but for lunch I found some shelter behind a large rock some distance away. After lunch I headed east again following a wall steeply down the hillside towards a forest. This required a lot of thought and care as I gingerly made my way down the slippery rocks and grass, but it was tremendous fun making my own way down.
 

At the forest edge I turned right along a track which kept to the edge of the wood. This was a delightful walk especially when it left the forestry plantation behind and skirted across the southern slopes of Rhobell Fawr. The tracks eliminated all the effort of the walking and instead I was able to enjoy the walking for what it was. There were nice views across the Wnion valley and the track itself was ingeniously crafted, and is obviously a holdover from more industrial times. After passing through another wood I left the track and took a faint path across more wonderfully colourful landscapes where mixtures of purple and brown heather merged in with yellow gorse. Emerging from this wild, open country I returned to my car along more paths and through another wood. Despite the weather I really enjoyed this walk as it turned out to be really varied and more than anything else, colourful. This is one of the advantages of walking in late summer as the hills are a lovely colour thanks to the heather and concludes my long weekend in Snowdonia for the August bank holiday. The weather was not very good, but I still had some enjoyable walks, well some of them, maybe one or two.