Lost in space
If you ever get a blank look and no response from CW editor Guy Procter, this is where he’s gone to in his head. Join him?
Take a trip to the rocky wonderland of Snowdonia’s Rhinogs (and into the editor’s, ahem, mind-palace).
WHEN THINGS GET a bit much there are a few places I disappear to in my mind – places I’ve walked where I’ve felt peace or bliss or like I could stay forever. One might be the roadless hamlet of Seldom Seen in Glencoynedale in the Lake District, another Sandwood Bay on the far north-west coast of Scotland.
But the innermost panic room in what I hesitate to call my mind-palace (Sherlock Holmes had one of those – perhaps I’ve got a mind-semi) is the area of southern Snowdonia called Rhynogydd – or in English, the Rhinogs. It’s one of those places I can teleport myself to safe in the knowledge I won’t bump into any other wanderer on the astral plane, or have to contend with anything much other than the soothing white noise of wind being torn by a particularly hardy kind of heather. Strewn with riven rocks, the slanted terraces of heather on wild and nearly pathless Rhinog Fawr make a wonderfully isolated mattress on which to lie and think about how significant your problems can really be given that you’re currently wearing the world as a backpack and hurtling through space at 67,000mph. It’s a most relaxing exercise and of course it’s even better in reality.
The actual Rhinogs themselves are just two mountains – Rhinog Fawr (‘Big Rhinog’) and Rhinog Fach (‘Little Rhinog’), claret-and-grey sentries facing out across the Irish Sea. But they’re just two in a long range of fine, distinctive peaks that stretches from the vale of Ffestiniog in the north to the fleshpots of Barmouth in the south (in fact everything within the hoop created by the A470 and A496). It’s a wonderful place of nobbly hobbitiness shading to grassy placidity – quite different in character from other parts of Snowdonia, and unique in possession of an invisibility cloak three layers thick. One layer is the roads – none bisects the range, and traffic from the east is directed either north to Ffestiniog or Porthmadog or south to Dolgellau or Barmouth, as if you couldn’t possibly meant to have come wanting the Rhinogs. The second is the overpowering gravitation exercised by Snowdon to the north and Cadair Idris to the south. (Imagine standing between George Clooney and Ryan Reynolds and trying to get attention from your wife.) The third is the fact none of the mountains here pricks the arbitrary but appealing 2500ft barrier – the highest, Y Llethr being 20ft short, the two eponymous Rhinogs notching 2363ft and 2336ft respectively.
Even the vehicular approaches from the west (to Cwm Bychan north of Rhinog Fawr and Cwm Nantcol in their cleavage) are doddery little singletrack roads with occasional pauses for sheep, leading to dead ends. There is no Rhinog hub – no Pen-y-Pass or Storey Arms or New Dungeon Ghyll; slim chance of seeing anyone unless you confine yourself to the path to the comparatively well-known (and misnamed) Roman Steps.
15 miles in extent, give or take, the range divides into three chunks – the Roman Steps and the badlands beyond at the top; the big three peaks of Rhinog Fawr, Rhinog Fach and Y Llethr in the middle, and the increasingly swooping, grassy contours of Crib-y-Rhiw, Diffwys, the satellite peak of Moelfre, and Craig y Grut at the bottom – the on-ramp from Barmouth.
Highlights of the northern section include the mini-Rhinog called Clip (1952ft), Moel Ysgyfarnogod with its nearby crown-of-thorns, Bronze Age cairn Bryn Cader Faner, and Foel Penolau – at 2014ft the King in the North of the Rhinogydd, with a summit crown encircled by cliffs and shattered rocks. It’s an enthralling wilderness for day walks with children, chock-a-block with wonderful rocky terrain, interesting hidden lakes (take the family for a wild swim in Llyn Eiddewbach on a hot day) and trig-topped summits. The best point of access is from Cwm Bychan car park (£2, payable by honesty box) and if you see anybody else on your walk write and tell us!
To tackle any of the big three summits in the range’s centre is a big wild walk – to do all three of -Fawr, -Fach and Y Llethr from Cwm Nantcol would be a primeval feast of a day. Not just the sort of place you’d be unfazed to see a Stegasaurus drinking from a llyn – this is the kind of place man feels like a very recent arrival on the scene, millennia from being the master of all he surveys. On the south-west shoulder of Rhinog Fawr (the least problematic way up – there are cairns from grid ref SH652287) the boulders take no account of the size of the average human stride, and the gaps between them positively snap at your ankles.
There’s no leaving a reassuring trail of footprints through the infinitely hard-wearing heather either.
Rhinog Fach’s best approach is from the south, via Llyn Hywel, from where its wonderful frowning brow – its best feature – looks most stirring. The climb up from Llyn Hywel is steep but good fun, and seems less hard work than the opposite ascent from Bwlch Drws Ardudwy to the north. All the Rhinogs have great views, but Fach offers the best – both from and to. Handsome it may be, but cussed too: like its bigger brother, Rhinog Fach makes itself awkward in mist and never gives you the feeling it’s here mainly for the benefit of your ambulatory novelty-species.
The biggest mountain in the range, Y Llethr, is more willing to be domesticated – you can tell that from the wall it’s allowed to be built right across its summit – a yoke into which no purebred Rhinog would slip. Y Llethr’s name means simply ‘slope’, and its easiest approach is up the long slope up the wall from the saddle (reached from the Cwm Nantcol road) between Y Llethr and its Christmas pudding-shaped outlier Moelfre to its west. The face Y Llethr turns to its northerly bretheren is rocky, but its summit is a rounded grass dome, and the face it turns to the south – to Crib-y-rhiw and Diffwys – takes up the milder theme that will characterise the southernmost portion of the Rhinogs.
Across the rocky rib of Crib y Rhiw and your eyes can lift up and your legs assume a more confident cadence – the more accustomed relationship between man and a well-walked mountain.
Between Diffwys and Barmouth the ridge’s wavelength grows and amplitude shrinks as it heads for a smooth landing in this resilient seaside town.
There aren’t many greater contrasts in walking than the chip shops, knick knacks and sticks of rock of Barmouth and the rocky fastness of the Rhinogs far away above the town. But after a long walk on this lovely, usually lonely, sometimes demanding mountain range do you know what? It’s actually easier to look down on things when you don’t get up somewhere high and isolated like the Rhinogs and see the world in its proper perspective. Whenever I disembark from the Rhinogs I’m as happy to return to everyday reality as I was removing myself from it in the first place. And that’s one of the things I love most about walking – its ability to restore the gleam to the everyday, to turn the stuff of humdrum life into something a bit special. And I don’t think there’s a better example of that than a tray of chips eaten with a wooden fork on Barmouth seafront after a day in the Rhinogs. You can keep your Michelin Stars. This is fine dining.