More Lleyn Tops – Bwlch Mawr, Gyrn Ddu + Paddling and Killing Seaweed

I just heard that there’s plans to build wind propellers along the Lleyn Peninsula. So, if anybody is fond of really beautiful landscape with a seascape to match, you’d best get to Lleyn quick before it’s too late.
Anyway – on the next trip, we parked neatly on a old, bypassed bit of main road at Tan – y –Graig – the bit of new road which cuts it off not appearing on my new 1:25k Ordnance Survey map – so there was some initial difficulty in finding the Wales Coastal path that climbs up the hill, partly due to the fact that there weren’t any footpath signs either. But we managed and soon, me and the dawg were romping (koff) up the steep hillside to Pen y Bwlch and soon, or at least, eventually, and after crossing a wide expanse of lovely moorland, we were turning off the path for the bagging of Bwlch Mawr.

This went more easily than expected and the walls marked on the map were easy to cross. We visited a rocky knoll which seemed to be the highest point, and then the trig point, which seemed to be the other highest point. A local walker also appeared at this point and together we remarked on how outrageously beautiful was the view along the coast and into the mountains that it really shouldn’t be allowed. This chap gave me some helpful info on the route onto the next hill and off we went in search of Gyrn Goch – the route to which is apparently barred by various enclosures.  But by following his advice, me and Bruno found the strategic hole in the wall and the vague path leading up to this top.

Gyrn Goch is another spiky rock-covered windy top with another superb view of the coast and hills – just the sort of place, in fact to play host to some wealth-generating wind propellers, along with some nice new roads made from carb limestone and some usefully deep and wide concrete platforms, not to mention a fine collection of beautiful pylons to carry off whatever electricity this infrastructure will manage to create. Gyrn Goch is much to wild to be comfortable. It needs to be calmed down.

Gryn Ddu is even worse. A short traverse over rough and grassy moorland is followed by an awkward lurch across badly organised boulders to a spiky top and a view which contains no wind turbines at all. Ridiculous. Obviously, all this natural stuff will soon be tamed and brought up to standard. The white heat of modern technology will have the the serried arrays of shiny white windmills as their new badge of finally emerging from their last high point in the late iron age.
Its a lovely spot, and the descent to  Pen y Bwlch is first awkward and then, for a few moments, apparently off the edge of the world till the easier grassy slopes lower down come into view.
This was 8 miles and 2400 feet of up.


A short visit to the beach at Dinas Dinlle was made for the ripping up of seaweed and the soothing of tootsies in the briney.  Dinas Dinlle is almost impossible to pronounce for an English tongue. It is a hillfort on the edge of the sea at the strategic southern entrance of the Menai Straits. It is the birthplace of one Lleu,  who, cursed by his mother Arianhrod to have no name, not to bear arms and not to marry a human. Trickery and magic  is used to achieve these desires and, for a wife, the most beautiful maiden that ever was seen , Blodeuwedd is conjured from the flowers of the oak and the broom and the meadowsweet.
Those were the days, eh?