Looking more-or-less north-east across Bwlch Drws-bern. The pair of fine cairns upon The Nantlle Ridge’s terminal peak Y Garn are, coincidentally (yeah, right!) – in direct line of sight from here, rising just left of the sunlit Trum y Ddysgl. The cairn upon foreground Mynydd Tal-y-Mignedd was raised by ‘grateful’ locals to honour Queen Victoria ... so needn’t concern us here.
The summit cairn... top right.
Looking approx south-east across the cairn footprint... one of the most unusual I’ve had the pleasure to visit owing to the nature of the rock. Y Cnicht and the Moelwyns can be seen top right.
A ‘moment’ perched upon the muppet shelter fashioned within the monument... looking approx north beyond Mynydd Tal-y-Mignedd (deep shadow) toward Mynydd Mawr, another site of a fine Bronze Age cairn. Moel Eilio rises to its right.
Approaching from the great cairn upon Garnedd Goch... Craig Cwm-Silyn’s two cairns – well, I think so – sit top right of the mountain.
The brooding mountain and its jagged northeastern ridge, seen from Mynydd Tal-y-Mignedd.
Craig Cwm-Silyn rises to the left of centre, beyond the broken ridge linking Trum y Ddysgl with Mynydd Tal-y-Mignedd (with obelisk, right of centre). Yr Eifl can be seen on the centre skyline.
The becairned summit of Craig Cwm-silyn is just visible in the centre, peaking over the slightly lower summits of the eastern Nantlle Ridge. Yr Eifl can be seen far right skyline. The viewpoint is Y Garn, Nantlle Ridge.
cairn on the summit of Craig Cwm Silyn
The cairn on the summit of Craig Cwm Silyn from Mynydd Tal y mignedd, right by the bejeweled obelisk.
The cairn can be seen perched upon the summit as mist sweeps across the mountain’s midrift to its right. Viewpoint is Trum y Ddysgl...
Looking across Cwm Pennant to Moel Hebog and its be-cairned satellite Moel yr Ogof. Owain Glyndwyr – yes, Himself – is said to slumber within the latter, hence the name. Must be getting on a bit now?
And finally note the placement.... apparently haphazard, the cairn is revealed to sit perfectly upon the horizon (approx midway to the right of Craig-Yr-Ogof) when viewed across the great headwall of Cwm Silyn, the natural line of ascent. Unless I’m very much mistaken. Owing to the topography the summit monument can not be seen from here.
And again looking toward the summit
And a retrospective toward Garnedd Goch. Again, note the embedded footprint.
Looking approx east toward the summit... note the footprint.
[NB: I’ve posted this and following images of a cairn-like structure set below and to the approx west of the summit cairn as ‘Interpretive’ to avoid any confusion with the summit cairn itself, a scheduled monument]
On the face of it this would appear the remains of industrial activity – Dyffryn Nantlle was subject to much quarrying back in the day (e.g. slate at Dorothea), plus lead and even apparently ancient copper mining – however check out the underlying footprint, particularly in following images. Is there more to this stone pile than is immediately apparent? A much older ancestry?
The peak reflected in the still waters of one of its llynnau at dusk. It is at moments such as this that I appear to feel the Earth relate to me on a personal... hey, atomic... level. Call my name. I reckon it did the same for our Bronze Age ancestors and that, peeling away the dross of modern communication, we are fundamentally the same animal.
Looking across Bwlch Dros-bern to the northern section of the Nantlle Ridge and, beyond, the Snowdon Massif. The outcropping rock is exquisite... almost Lewisian Gneiss.
Looking approx north-east along the northern section of The Nantlle Ridge from Craig Cwm-Silyn, the sentinel peak. The Snowdon Massif, Yr Wyddfa engulfed in cloud, lies beyond. Y Garn, with two fine round cairns, can be seen perfectly framed (in shadow) to the left of Trum-y-Ddysgl.
Craig Cwm-Silyn is the mountain in shadow just left of centre, with Garnedd Goch far left and more of the Nantlle Ridge stretching away to the right.
Craig Cwm-silyn is centre of image, with misty Moel Hebog over on the left and conical Yr Aran on the right. From Foel Boethwel in the Moelwyns.
Craig Cwm-Silyn is the far right peak and Garnedd Goch is far left.
Craig Cwm-Silyn and cairn, the big one at the back, and the obelisk upon Mynydd Tal y Mignedd.
The Nantlle Ridge (centre), in the context of other high-level monuments of North Wales. Seen from Elidir Fawr in the Glyderau.
Yr Wyddfa and the Snowdon Massif completely dominate the horizon looking approx north along the Nantlle Ridge from Craig Cwm-Silyn. Less obvious, but perhaps just as compelling, is the realisation of just how well Y Garn – bearing two massive cairns – fits into the overall scheme of things.... assuming there was one, of course. The natural positionning is just about perfect, is it not?
Looking across Bwlch Dros-bern from Mynydd Tal-y-Mignedd, the wonder of the cliff wall of Craig Pennant perhaps puts all our species’ attempts to ‘tame’ or appropriate such landscapes – by building monuments – in perspective? Maybe, but I’m still glad they are there..... Incidentally, the Ceunant yr Allt can be seen making its way down the mountainside to the left of the quite remarkable drystone wall.
Craig Cwm-Silyn, at a relatively modest 2,408ft, is the highest point of Snowdonia’s Nantlle Ridge, known to connoisseurs as one of the finest ridge walks in Wales. Snowdon rises across the valley and, happily, takes virtually all the walking traffic.......
As an added bonus many of the Nantlle Ridge’s summits, not least Craig Cwm-Silyn, possess the remains of Bronze Age burial cairns [e.g see Y Garn to the NE] and – better still – the atmosphere to enjoy them in. This summit cairn has been amended to provide shelter from the wind, but nevertheless is a prize well worth seeing, if only as a spot to chill away from the ‘civilised’ world. To be frank, the views from it’s crest are staggering.
“Remains of a stone built cairn on the summit of Craig Cwm Silyn. Roughly circular on plan and measuring about 8.5m in diameter and up to 2m in height. A modern walker’s shelter has been constructed within its summit”..... so says Coflein.
Once when William Ellis, of the Gilwern, was fishing on the bank of Cwm Silin Lake on a dark misty day, he had seen no living Christian from the time when he left Nantlle. But as he was in a happy mood, throwing his line, he beheld over against him in a clump of rushes a large crowd of people, or things in the shape of people about a foot in stature: they were engaged in leaping and dancing. He looked on for hours, and he never heard, as he said, such music in his life before. But William went too near them, when they threw a kind of dust into his eyes, and, while he was wiping it away, the little family took the opportunity of betaking themselves somewhere out of his sight, so that he neither saw nor heard anything more of them.
This is in ‘Cymru Fu’, edited by Isaac Foulkes (1862), which is in Welsh, but I have taken it from John Rhys who considerately translated it in his ‘Celtic Folklore’ of 1901.
