Images

Image of Bwlch Bach a’r Grib (Cairn(s)) by thesweetcheat

Retrospective view from the top of the Y Grib ridge. The cairn tops the rounded green summit just to the left of centre. Mynydd Troed rises on the left, Pen y Fan and the central Brecon Beacons beyond that. Centre would be the Fforest Fawr summits, and the further mountains on the far horizon are the wonderful peaks of Y Mynydd Ddu. And many, many monuments scattered throughout this landscape. Howling gale not pictured.

Image credit: A. Brookes (19.3.2022)
Image of Bwlch Bach a’r Grib (Cairn(s)) by thesweetcheat

Looking down on Pen y Grib and Bwlch Bach a’r Grib from partway up the Y Grib ridge. The cairn is on top of the grassy summit in the centre.

Image credit: A. Brookes (19.3.2022)
Image of Bwlch Bach a’r Grib (Cairn(s)) by thesweetcheat

Approaching from the southwest, the first sight of the cairn after cresting the first steep climb. Beyond the cairn to the right, the excellent Y Grib ridges climbs the Black Mountains escarpment.

Image credit: A. Brookes (19.3.2022)
Image of Bwlch Bach a’r Grib (Cairn(s)) by GLADMAN

Looking across Bwlch Bach a’r Grib from the cairn to the upper reaches of Y Grib itself... accessing the distant summit ridge of The Black Mountains. Further monuments are to be found upon Mynydd Bychan (top left) and Y Das (extreme top left). A number of horseshow routes can be engineered depending on fitness and/or inclination.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Image of Bwlch Bach a’r Grib (Cairn(s)) by GLADMAN

SC’s miscellaneous post suggests the cairn possesses a cist. I concur. For once the walker’s shelter (top right) does not desecrate the monument but is placed at an appropriate distance. Castell Dinas and Mynydd Troed loom through the mist... lots going on here.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Image of Bwlch Bach a’r Grib (Cairn(s)) by GLADMAN

Looking from Y Das, itself featuring a ‘probable’ round barrow. In my opinion the ascent of the ridge Y Grib is the finest in South Wales.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Image of Bwlch Bach a’r Grib (Cairn(s)) by thesweetcheat

Some landscape context, from Rhos Fach common to the north. The ridge of Y Grib sweeps down from the left, Bwlch Bach a’r Grib cairn is on top of the “bump” in the centre (Pen y Grib). Castell Dinas sits to the fore of Mynydd Troed, which is the pointy near-mountain at the right.

Image credit: A. Brookes (24.8.2011)
Image of Bwlch Bach a’r Grib (Cairn(s)) by GLADMAN

Some landscape perspective from across Bwlch Bach a’r Grib. The setting is classic Bronze Age.... Mynydd Troed crowns the skyline.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone

Articles

Bwlch Bach a’r Grib

Lingering, swirling mist ensures thoughts of guiding the Mam C all the way up the wonderful Y Grib from Castell Dinas remain just that. Abstract thoughts. I mean, you wouldn’t visit a fine art exhibition during a power cut, would you? Nevertheless the presence of the Bwlch Bach a’r Grib cairn crowning the next section of the ridge is felt a little too strongly to be ignored. The call is unspoken, never unheard...

We slither – great word, that – down from Castell Dinas’s entrance into a morass of mud, the distinctive hue of which leaves us in no doubt we are in Old Red Sandstone country, regardless of visibility. From here a rather steep climb to the north-east brings us to a small drystone walker’s shelter. NO! They haven’t got this one as well? Thankfully, however, the mist swirls and the ridge is seen to continue to rise for a short distance more. Yeah, false alarm. Since here, crowning this minor summit, sits the deceptively substantial remains of a grassy Bronze Age funerary cairn. Funerary? Well, yes, particularly since Coflein cites a possible cist buried within the structure. Closer inspection reveals that, just like the similar monument upon Pen-y-Beacon (Hay Bluff), virtually straddling the English border to the east, our friends are on the money. I concur.

Slowly the mist rises and the sun breaks through to illuminate the landscape. And what a landscape this is! Behind us to the south west rises Mynydd Troed, beyond Castell Dinas itself. The siting of several of the Neolithic monuments in the locality suggest the former may possibly have been viewed as a ‘mother hill’ by the long cairn builders? Perhaps the architects of the rounder variety of cairn viewed it as ‘special’, too? To the south/south-east the beautiful Rhiangoll valley is worth the price of admission in itself, whilst the western/northern arc is that of pastoral beauty, the gliders which soar above the northern escarpment of the Black Mountains on clear days remaining firmly upon terra firma today. Which just leaves the north-east, the twisting grassy ridge of Y Grib leading the eye to the desolate peat bog summit of Waun Fach upon the right hand skyline. Incidentally a further Bronze Age round barrow is to be found upon Y Das, the far left hand peak.

As we sit and take it all in the only sound – aside from the call of an ‘interceptor’ crow, dispatched from the collective to engage and comprehensively ‘shoot down’ a bird of prey (of some description) foolish enough to approach the colony – is that of the nascent Rhiangoll cascading into the valley from its source just below, and to the north-west, of the aforementioned Waun Fach. Small eight ‘person’ teams of army cadets are visible labouring up Y Grib, their positions betrayed by orange rucksack covers. They are by no means the first, of course, finds of flint arrowheads instructing us that men bearing arms have roamed these high ridges for millennia. Perhaps one of them was interned in this very cairn which still crowns this summit? What an inspiring thought.

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