The Great Outdoors Spring 2019

HOW TO APPROACH this loneliest of Welsh hills is a

conundrum. Most guidebook writers suggest doing so from the

east, from the head of the Elan Valley’s Caban-coch reservoir.

Starting by way of Rhiwnant, you branch south up the deep-

pooled Nant Paradwys to Bwlch y Ddau Faen, and there’s your

objective, less than three miles to the west.

“Bogs to that!” is the aptest take on this route. here’s nothing

paradisiac about the Nant Paradwys. If the weather’s been at all

wet over the previous three months, it’s welcome to the heart of

squelch! hen again, if you really

like to sufer, come at it from

Ystrad Flur to the north-west, by

way of the moorland pool of Llyn

Gynon, the stream from which

lows into the Claerwen reservoir.

he long ridge of Esgair Garthen,

above it to the south, leads towards

Drygarn Fawr. But you’ll

encounter some arduous

bog-trotting before you reach that

irm objective. his is truly the

great wilderness. A rough traverse

of Elan/Claerwen headwater

country may be the most satisfying

(and arduous) approach to one of the best, strangest and most

remote of Welsh hills, the taunting presence of which teases at

your topographical sense from miles away. But I’d no longer

choose to go that way. Nor would I opt for another marvellous

round from the east, starting at Llanafan-fawr (very good pub

here, incidentally, the Red Lion) on the road from Beulah to

Llandrindod, and taking in Gorllwyn – a neglected hill!

Fortunately for the faint-hearted and ageing stragglers among

us who no longer have the legs for these marathon rounds, there

is an easier option for the ascent of this fabulously remote hill, by

way of a bridleway that starts through forestry above Llanerch

Yrfa in the Gwesyn valley (GR: SN834555)to climb steadily

across the moor to the hill.

And what a hill Drygarn is, with a character out of all

proportion to its mere 645m of height. But height isn’t the

primal quality here. Even the lit of its ridge above the

surrounding moorland is by no means remarkable. It has a rocky

spine running north-east and south-west – attractive rock, too; a

rough, stony conglomerate with quartz pebbles and seams – that

rises just high enough to command. Bronze Age man

augmented the feeling of the place by building here two huge

burial cairns, perhaps a quarter of a mile apart (the third of the

cairns that give the hill its name is a mile away to the south on

the ridge-gable of Drygarn Fach).

hey are visible for miles around, beckoning. When you

arrive at them, neither disappoints. he one on the higher

summit is perhaps 10 feet tall, 60 in circumference, squat and

powerful, dwaring and looking down on the decayed Ordnance

Survey pillar a few yards away. he northern cairn is less well

cared for, has an old Brecknock county concrete boundary post

stuck into it irreverently, but has one striking feature. Its top is

crowned with white, glittering quartz, and the efect is quite

magical. To the south and east deeply incised valleys lead of to

the lush country, their sides blotched with heather, patched with

outcrops of pink-tinged scree. Beyond are glimpses of further

hills: villages in a folded landscape, ields of ripening wheat and

barley, hedgerows, copses, half-timbered cottages.

But this is not the land Drygarn Fawr inhabits. he carpet

around its throne is of peat, seamed

and clifed and stratiied, dark

chocolate against sage, tawny and

purple moor-shades. he whole of

a ninety-degree arc to the north

appears featureless, but the map is

rich in names. For 10 or 15 miles

there is no sign of habitation or

human activity other than the

impinging forestry. It appears

entirely featureless, but if you were

to follow these vague long

depressions where the streams

start, there would be rocks with

smooth green turf around them,

pools of green or of bright ochre, emerald patches of sphagnum,

and the sound of skylark, curlew and grouse. he skyline,

lacking in striking individual notation, curves round in a slow,

powerful, melodic sweep, very luid, and across the whole scene

there is the constant play of light and shade. As you look, it is

khaki, but where the cloud shadow has passed, from among it

glimmers a burnt-out, faint green that is almost grey. he clifs

above Claerwen are red.

Suddenly, in the heart of the moor, a long streak of sun

sketches in the underside of a ridge so that it looks like the belly

of a recumbent animal. I’m reminded of prehistoric cave

paintings. When the electric light goes out the guide holds a

candle to them, your eyes accustom to the dark and because of

the primitive artist’s use of relief in the rock they licker into

magical life. hat thought in turn reminds me that 2,000 years

ago this moor was inhabited. Five hundred years ago people

lived here. Now it is empty. But as Hilaire Belloc wrote of a not

far distant hill, it is “like the continual experience of this life

wherein the wise irmly admit vast Presences to stand in what is

an apparent emptiness, unperceived by any sense. “

Map: OS 1:50,000 Landranger sheet 147

“To the south and east

deeply incised valleys

lead off to the lush

country, their sides

blotched with heather,

patched with outcrops

of pink-tinged scree”

MOUNTAIN PORTRAIT

Jim Perrin welcomes you to the Cambrian mountains,

and the land of the squelch!

DRYGARN FAWR

FURTHER READING: Try the collection of poems, “Time Being”, by Ruth

Bidgood, who spent much of her life at Abergwesyn and has written some

of the inest post-war landscape and religious verse to come out of Wales

• “the concentrated life of my irreplaceable solitudes”. The lyric “Gwesyn”
  in particular evokes perfectly the atmosphere of Drygarn Fawr.

30 The Great Outdoors Spring 2019