BRECON BEACONS
Modest. Unassuming. Lowly. All terms used to describe this compact peak on the edge of the Black Mountains, none of which do it justice. Take a wander up SUGAR LOAF and you’ll discover this is no sweet little hill – it’s a mega mountain in miniature.
Before the emails start flooding in, let’s address the elephant in the paragraph to the left. Although known by most as Sugar Loaf, or The Sugar Loaf, this hill has a more correct name. Mynydd Pen-y-fâl means ‘mountain of the head of the peak’ in Welsh.
There are several reasons to use this as opposed to Sugar Loaf. For starters, it’s likely to predate the English name, and at a time where there’s a focus on keeping Cymraeg alive and using the Welsh titles for places rather than the anglicised alternatives, there’s a good argument for using the original. Secondly, Sugar Loaf is a far from unique name for a hill. There are Sugar Loafs the world over, including at least one more in Wales, and this characterful peak in Monmouthshire deserves a more exclusive designation. And finally, the truth is that Sugar Loaf looks nothing like a sugarloaf. What’s a sugarloaf? Up until the late 1800s, it was the form in which sugar was produced and sold; a tall cone with a rounded top looking a bit like a windmill without sails. Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio de Janeiro – perhaps the world’s most famous sugarloaf – looks like a sugarloaf. Mynydd Pen-y-fâl does not.
The importance of how Mynydd Pen-y-fâl (or simply Pen-y-fâl to its friends) looks goes beyond this apparent misnomer. If you’re a giant lump of a mountain, you can get away with being a little dull and lacking in interest, relying on your sheer bulk to impress (Skiddaw in the Lakes, I’m looking at you). At 596m high, Pen-y-fâl doesn’t even hit that magic 610m/2000ft height that would officially make it a mountain, and smaller hills have to try harder.
To be honest, my first impressions of Pen-y-fâl didn’t exactly impress. I wandered in from the quiet country lanes to the north-east, up gentle slopes, and along obvious easy-going paths – much of which are the Cambrian Way. Sure, the terrain rose up ahead, a silhouette of high ground reaching for, if not really threatening, the sky. But it appeared to do so casually, and without zest. The wild ponies grazing among the heather that lined the wide grass pathways seemed as laid back as the hill; they were neither interested in nor troubled by my arrival in their home, just moderately disinterested. Which was exactly what Pen-y-fâl
