Читать книгу Hillwalking in Wales - Vol 1 онлайн

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Matters only improve when you travel the third side of the Aran triangle on the narrow road that snakes through the hills from Dinas Mawddwy, over Bwlch y Groes and back to Lake Bala. Now at last you begin to be stirred rather than charmed. Fearsome hills hover ominously, even threateningly, over the pretty little village of Llanymawddwy. Further N, where the road curls round Cwm Croes, black cliffs fleetingly arc the sky

But enough of road work! Boots must be donned if the Arans' heartland is to be probed, and there is no better entrée than the peat-hagged ridge that forms the E flank of Cwm Croes and culminates in the two swampy outliers of Esgeiriau Gwynion and Llechwedd Du. Now for the first time the long furrowed precipice of the Arans' E face is revealed in all its splendour. Dark, menacing, unyielding, riddled with gullies, it carries the twin citadels of Aran Benllyn and Aran Fawddwy with consummate ease. No mean feat, for Aran Fawddwy is the highest point in Wales S of a line joining Tremadoc and Llanwrst, and nowhere between the two peaks does the land drop below 2700ft. Nestling beneath the cliffs are two lonely lakes: Lliwbran, sun-starved and desolate, hemmed in by barren screes and rivers of boulders; Dyfi, windswept, open to the world, birthplace of the Dovey.