Craig Rhiwarth

The crag above Llangynog closes the head of the Tanat valley, and on top of it is one of the larger prehistoric enclosures in this part of Wales.

The fort

A substantial enclosure using the natural defences of the crag, with a stone rampart where the ground does not do the work by itself.

What makes it notable is the interior. There are the remains of a large number of round houses — platforms and stone footings — visible within the enclosure. Estimates run into the dozens.

That matters because most Welsh hillforts show little or nothing inside without excavation. A fort with a legible interior lets you think about it as somewhere people lived rather than as a set of banks, and Craig Rhiwarth is one of the better examples in mid Wales.

The fort is conventionally assigned to the Iron Age.

The mines below

The slope beneath the crag is cut about with lead workings. Llangynog was among the richest lead districts in Britain in the 1720s and 1730s, and later the same mountain produced slate.

So this one hill carries an Iron Age settlement on top and three centuries of industrial extraction underneath, with the second cutting into the ground the first stood on.

The usual warnings apply. Shafts, unstable adits and toxic lead spoil. Stay on the paths and keep dogs off the tips.

Getting up

Steeply, from Llangynog. It is a stiff climb of around 300 metres on rough ground and there is no easy route.

The reward is the view down the Tanat and across to the Berwyn, and the sense — quite strong up there — of why anybody would put a settlement on a crag at the head of a dead-end valley.

Around

Llangynog is at the bottom, with a pub. Pennant Melangell, two miles up the side valley, holds the earliest surviving Romanesque shrine in northern Europe and is one of the quietest places in Wales.

The road over the Berwyn to Bala leaves from the village and is spectacular and frequently closed in winter.