Fantastic site, this.... in a fantastic location, too. Just too far 'down the slope' to visit following an audience with the Hafen stones/Drum Ddu cairns a couple of years back, I congratulate myself upon my untypical restraint back then. Yeah, you'll want to devote a fair bit of time to this one, such is the form and vibe.
I approached in a rather, er, roundabout way, starting from road's end below Gors-wen, at the head of the beautiful Cwm Chwefri, subsequently arcing to the right around the trees north of Little Pudding Cottage, prior to heading uphill above the eastern bank of the Nant Hafen. Pretty rough going through high fern... but there you are. It's well worth a detour in order to make the final approach from above and to the northeast to enjoy as splendid a view of a cairn as I've had the pleasure in a long time.
The first thing to strike the blissed-out traveller is "wow, this is a big one" .... some 60ft in diameter, in fact. OK, some fool might've taken a chunk out of it at some point, but nevertheless (in my experience) relatively intact... Needless to say, the Coflein description doesn't begin to do the site justice. Or convey much at all really:
"A cairn, 18.3m in diameter and 0.9m high, much disturbed." [J.Wiles 23.04.02]
The cairn is seemingly positioned by those who took such great trouble to fashion such a massive stone pile here millennia ago so Pen-y-Fan and Corn Du just grace the southern horizon... incidentally in a manner very similar to the not-so-distant Saith Maen stone row. As I hang out in the sun, Gorllwyn, with its cairn cemetery and massive prostrate monolith, graces the western aspect... and the thought occurs: isn't it about time I re-visited that brutally wild summit? Oh dear, here we go again. You know those moments when you can curse your grey matter for coming up with such hair-brained schemes? Tell me about it.
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Posted by GLADMAN
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