The Berwyn Hills and Pistyll Rhaeadr

Friday 19th December 2008

Just before Christmas I went to Wales for a couple of days to go up a few mountains that I had previously been up four years ago. When I went up then it was extraordinarily windy and started to rain as I made my way off the hills; on this walk it started overcast with glimmers of sun and just got worse. By the afternoon it was forecast to get really bad so I wasn’t going to take that long. This walk was on the Berwyns, a range of high hills and boggy heathland near Llangollen in Wales. I parked near a huge waterfall at the end of a narrow road from the village of Llanrheadr-ym-Mochnant (seriously, that is the name of the place, just don’t ask me to pronounce it!). Slowly, I made my way along a track that climbed the hillside into the short valley of the Nant y Llyn, which was a great, well-graded route through a picturesque, narrow valley with a sight of the Berwyns always ahead of me. The climb eventually brought me to the cliffs below Moel Sych with the lake, Llyn Lluncaws in the bowl below.

After climbing up onto the hilltop I bypassed the summit of Moel Sych and headed towards Cadair Berwyn, the highest point in the Berwyns, sticking close to the cliff edge as I walked along the ridge. Clouds had already descended onto the tops by the time I reached the ridge and the wind was picking up, but the weather failed to spoil my enjoyment as I reached the trig point at the summit of Cadair Berwyn. After a while I headed back along the ridge to the top of Moel Sych where I determined the direction I should go and followed a path across the boggy hills. After a couple of kilometres of walking I began to wonder why I didn't seem to be getting anywhere so finally I had a look at my map and GPS and realised that I had been heading west across a vast moorland in the opposite direction to where I should have been going. I had no choice but to reluctantly turn around and walk all the way back through the bogs to the top of Moel Sych.

Once I returned to the top I took the correct route off the hill, descending steeply down the grassy hillside of Trum Felen. The weather by now was beginning to turn nasty with the winds picking up and rain trying to fall on the tops so I was clearly getting off the hills only just in time. Near the bottom I reached a track that took me back to the bottom of the valley, rejoicing in the abundance of well-graded tracks in the area that are a hold-over from when lead mining was actively undertaken. Fortunately, the tracks are now the only trace that is left of all that industry but they do provide good, enjoyable routes for getting onto the hills. At the bottom I visited the waterfall that I had parked near and glimpsed from afar at the start of the walk. This is Pistyll Rhaeadr, the highest waterfall in England or Wales at 240 feet, and easily the highest waterfall I’ve ever seen; from the footbridge at the bottom it was really scary as I gaxed sharply up at the enormous waterfall that towered above me. This place must be absolutely amazing in the summer, unfortunately it wasn’t the summer and the weather was getting worse.

I don't think you can consider the Berwyns as great mountains as they have far too many bogs and so is really just high moorland, especially on their western side. But the route I took for my ascent was the best way up and showed off its best side. I was starting from the south beside an enormous waterfall that is surrounded by high cliffs to the rocky eastern edge of the Berwyn Hills.