Pete's Eats - The well known walker's and climber's caff in Llanberis.

Weather Links

MWIS. Weather forecast for Snowdonia.

Met Office. 5 day mountain forecast.

Snowdonia Snowline - Daily record of the Carneddau Snowline.

Metcheck weather - Longer range forecasts.

Advertise your Snowdonia Business here! Email for info.

Accuweather

Snowdon Weather Station Project. Weather data and Webcams of Elidir Fawr and Moel Eilio.

Snowdon Sherpa Bus Timetables

Welsh Highland Railway.

Travelline Wales.

theTrainline - Timetables and online booking

The Welsh 3000s - website just about the 14 peaks.

The BMC - British Mountaineering Council.

The Mountain Bothy Association - yes, there are bothies in Eryri...

TAC - The Angry Corrie Scottish hillwalking fanzine, read it free.

Eryri - Snowdonia National Park.

Oggy Cam . Ogwen Mountain Rescue and a Ogwen Valley webcam.

BBC North West Wales.

Graham's Wales Photos. Loads of excellent pics on Eryri in here.

North Wales Photographs Beautiful photos of North Wales by Simon Kitchin.

Cambrian Mountains National Park A 'Should-Be' fourth welsh national park.

Snowdonia Society Charity which looks after the interests onf the National Park.

eryriway.org.uk Sister site to walkeryri, emphasising long distance trails.

Cadair Berwyn from Llandrillo.
Distance and Ascent 21.5km, 1020m OS Map Required OS Explorer 17 Landranger 150 Time 7 hours Difficulties Bogs and more bogs. Start Location Llandrillo, Denbighshire. End Location as start Grading Hard Facilities Pub in village. Public Transport Buses from Bala / Llangollen GPS Files

I’m in the process of shamelessly filling in the gaps in coverage on Walk Eryri so after the jaunt up Aran Fawddwy, the nearby Berwyn range seemed the logical step. This sees a walk covering each area in North Wales with many more to come. Might have to plan some trips to the Beacons next year!

The walk fr om Llandrillo covers all the main summits, and isn’t excessively long considering the short hours of daylight in November. I’m always concerned about biting off more than I can chew in new areas, as you never know what problems you’ll come across (such as bogs and access problems).

Unfortunately, my planned trip by bus and hostel came to nought. The YH in Cynwyd is no more, as it seems are most Youth Hostels that cannot be crammed to the rafters with schoolchildren. I’m thankful that my membership goes to the Scottish branch (nothing to do with it being cheaper). So a car had to be used to get to the start of the walk, but there are buses from the Llangollen end. There’s a car park near the river if you have to.

From this spot, follow the road east and take the narrow lane that continues on as the road veers left. You pass some bungalows, before the lane turns right and uphill. Continue on the track, and ignore all footpath signs that seek to tempt you off it as the obvious track is the right one. The road ends at SJ040 372, and passing through a gate turns left and through a small wood. As you can see from the photos, the autumn colours were pretty intense.

Navigation now is simple. The track takes you all the way up to Pen Bwlch Llandrillo, but the walk up is pleasant enough. A bridleway crosses (SJ051 375) that offers a shorter route up to the main tops, but misses out on Cadair Bronwen. The only problem with this track is that it’s been churned up in places by forestry vehicles into a right mess. At Nant y Brain, the ford is flooded as there’s large logs blocking the stream and it’s not until you’re past Pont Rhyd-yr-hydd that the path returns to normal green lane. You wonder when you see this if it would be allowed in a National Park, as these peaks are outside Snowdonia. However, there are a National Nature Reserve and a Special Protection Area due to their bird life. The track is rarely steep, and you’ll reach the bwlch at a steady pace.

The bwlch has a memorial stone, dedicated to Wayfarer. Today it also had a CCW truck who probably came up the other side, or really early. Near the memorial, there was a bit of a crag, which was the only shelter in the area except for the truck. Reluctant to leave, we crossed the track and there’s a peaty track marked by a waymarker – “Cadair Bronwen” this way it enticed. It was about all we could see, as the fog was down.

Despite what I’d heard, navigation across the Berwyn isn’t really that hard. Once the first section of path was cleared, a fence can be followed all the way to Moel Sych at the far end. What does take a lot of work is crossing the blanket bogs. Ascending Cadair Bronwen gives you a taste of what’s to come, and a chance to retreat if it’s too much for you. There’s every type of bog here. Good, honest mud is plentiful, as are those small but deep pools of water you can fall into. Unfortunately, there’s plenty of small green patches where you can lose a whole leg unexpectedly, and quaking sections that really feel that they won’t hold your weight. The star of the Berwyn bogs though, has to be the Acme Knee Deep peat bogs, or at least you hope that’s how deep they are. These come in various forms, from the deceptive where you only sink heel deep, to the liquefied pits that if you’d step into you’d leave but a floating hat to mark the spot.

Cadair Bronwen is a welcome break from bog hopping, and with a sizeable cairn it feels like a summit, but lacks shelter. So it’s off down to Bwlch Maen Gwynedd and yet more bogs. While there’s a lot of bare peat here, there are also some easy boardwalks that take you across most of the worst sections. They’re wide and faced with a grippy, plastic coated metal. They’re also thick like sleepers, so they don’t rock as you walk on them either. The worst bog is actually at the top of the ridge, where you’re better off crossing the fence to avoid going knee deep.

The next section would be a pleasant ridge walk in clearer weather. Rather, we had tantalising glimpses through the mist of Cwm Maen Gwynedd below. Continuing in the mistaken belief that the cloud was about to part at any moment kept spirits high, but we weren’t going to get a view today.  It was welcoming to see the trig at Cadair Berwyn , but this is no longer the official high point. That’s along the ridge, through a rather wet col (there’s a lake, so this col should be wet) before climbing the next bump on the ridge.

There’s a summit shelter on the Cadair Berwyn (New Top), and a proper mountain feel as you see some of the only rocks of the day. No doubt you can see Llyn Lluncaws on a clearer day. We could just about see the fence, so we followed this down, and up again to Moel Sych. This hill is a testament to the sense of humour of the farmers who were no doubt asked by some outsider what the hill was called. Knowing that the bogs on the summit were blacker, deeper and more boot-pilfering than any other they decided upon the welsh for Dry Bald Hill. Bald and hill it might be, dry it certainly isn’t.

I was glad to reach the summit, returning to the west of the fence which is much less boggy. The far side is bare and peaty – with this side looking as if it might go that way at some point. Tyre tracks are aplenty, so it begs the question of what’s caused the erosion?

Tracks are retraced to Cadair Berwyn, and the stile opposite the trig marks the path westwards to Lladrillo. This starts off faint, but becomes much easier to follow. Of course it remains wet underfoot, but the terrain finally eases once you pass Foel Fawr and reach the ring contour at 600m. Looking back from here, you get a feeling of spaciousness, they’re hills that you can vanish into for a decent weekend’s wild camping without worrying about the temptation of that village pub or full English fry up.

The path continues straight until you reach SJ046 334 where a post signifies that you turn right. There’s a sheep dip by the river which you’re aiming for. First you need to cross the river, so you might get wet feet. Then the path becomes fainter, but there’s a stile in the wall you can aim on (take a bearing along the path – roughly north). Just beyond this, there’s a quagmire that needs crossing. Only a few small streams, but I felt I was floating on rushes and would fall in at any point! A bit of a detour would no doubt have found an easier way around, but we’d had so much bog we weren’t about to move for another.

Finally the path continues directly to Clochnant, the last section is boggy and steep. There’s a path that veers off to the left off the permissive path that an eye should be kept open for, as the stream is a little deep and the path beyond could be described as boggy. Once the track on the other side is reached, and the boggy section out of the way, the track becomes an easy green lane all the way down to the village and your start point. On a day like this one, even the normally much maligned tarmac is welcome as some solid ground underfoot! 

General Links

Snowdonia attractions Several great reviews about some of Snowdonia's better known attractions. 

English-welsh dictionary Links and resources to help you translate that welsh word into English.

Walking shoes - Another site that I found that sells walking shoes online.

Merrell Walking Shoes from fitnessfootwear.com, decent little site i found for Merrell walking shoes.

Whalley Warm and Dry - paramo stockists, great service and range.

V-G Walking and Backpacking. Inspirational website detailing one to three (and more) day walks around the UK.

Trekking Britain. Route descriptions & experience as opposed to guide book.

OutdoorsMagic - Forum based website, lots of information on here.

Phil George - Mountain Leader Training in Llanberis.

Peak and Fell Walking - A photographic guide to walking in Britain's National Parks.

Wild Tramp.co.uk - New site on walking in the UK. Looks promising.

Tracklogs IMHO the best mapping for PC.

MemoryMap Still good, but route handling clumsier.

Viewranger mapping for smartphones.

Fugawi and Anquet are also popular.

Quo The new kid on the block.

Open Street Map - Open source mapping as featured on this site.

Multimap - Free online mapping.

Get a Map - Free online mapping from the OS

Access Land in Wales - online mapping from CCW.