SNOWDONIA
A trove of human history and tragedy can be discovered in the hills of ARAN FAWDDWY. Just don’t forget to look up!
It was a photo of a 1944 Mosquito aircraft wreckage embedded into the hillside that brought me to this often-forgotten south-east corner of the Snowdonia National Park. The photo, taken by hillwalker-turned-aircraft-crash enthusiast Ian Burgess, showed weathered steely propellers, miraculously still intact, fanning out from a rusty hub that hadn’t turned in almost 60 years. It looked totally alien in the wilderness of high mountain terrain that surrounded it on the upper slopes of Aran Fawwdwy.
Usually an escape to the hills meant seeking out a place in nature, deliberately avoiding the creations of man. But these aircraft remains and their lonely surroundings seemed to have a story to tell, and it was as good an excuse as any for a Welsh mountain foray in an area I’d never been before.
Proper mountains
The walk began in the lost valley Cwm Cywarch, where quiet farm pastures rear up into steep rocky crags and a ridgeline of fine mountain terrain that reaches to over 900m at the summit of Aran Fawddwy. Far from the rolling grasslands I’d pictured in this part of Snowdonia, these were mountains proper.
An easy traverse had led me up onto Drysgol at 745m, where our first proper view of Aran Fawddwy revealed itself. Drws Bach separated us from Aran Fawddwy with an airy narrowing. On one side we looked down to a small llyn (a perfect looking wild camp spot for another day), where an impressive buttress rose up, guarding the summit. On the other side, near-vertical crags dropped steeply in a semi-circle around the valley of head of Hengwm. A cairn teetered on the most exposed point of Drws Bach, with a remembrance plaque to a Mountain Rescue team member who was killed by lightning near the spot when on duty on 5 June 1960. It was the first reminder that this was a place where Mother Nature ruled, and she took no prisoners.
That same Mother had also decided that the approach to the top of Aran Fawddwy would be guarded by a jumble of rocks for the final kilometre. So, with increasing intensity, we took a creative route through the rocks, first winding our way on grassy tracks between them until we were rock hopping, scrabbling and balancing our way to its precipitous crescendo. A diving board of rock protruded out just below the summit with nothing but air beneath. The llyn I’d spied earlier, Crieglyn Dyfi, was right below, 435m directly below to b
