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Cwm Hengwm route (AN6)

Hengwm is the most popular route up Aran Fawddwy.

My advice for the perfect day would be out via Cwm Cywarch, home down Hengwm when the long slopes that can seem endless on a muggy morning are perfect for a relaxed afternoon.

Craig Cywarch

A footpath sign at 853187 directs you across a bridge, through a rickety kissing-gate and up a rough muddy track beneath a canopy of trees. Turn L when you meet a gravelly farm road and in a few minutes join the long, carefully graded path that slants across the N flanks of Pen yr Allt-uchaf. The trough of Hengwm deepens with every step. Colossal green slopes, smooth and bare, gaze silently down on an empty cwm that curls round as if to feed on its own monumental loneliness.

Above Hengwm the path toils up to the Drysgol spur and a teardrop tarn where, on a still day, you may glimpse the Aran tops reflected round its tussocky shores. The spur caries on to the slender neck of Drws Bach (Little Door) where it narrows to a whisker and a cairn at 863214 commemorates a member of the RAF who was killed by lightning in 1960. The views are tremendous: a 1000ft drop into Hengwm on one side; the Arans' E face on the other, as majestic and thrilling as anything in Wales. Beneath the cliffs lies the sparkling Creiglyn Dyfi, flat and bland-looking as you stand by its shores, but the very quintessence of a mountain lake from this lofty eyrie (never more so than in winter when it mirrors the blacks and whites of the snow-capped peaks all round).