Completing the Welsh Highlands – Uchafion Cymru

 

Completing the Welsh Highlands – Uchafion Cymru 

Yesterday morning proved a wondrous encounter with early morning frost and misted hills that quickly turned into blue skies overlooking wild surrounds.  It was also my completion of the Welsh Highlands – Uchafion Cymru list.  I had chosen an excellent and extremely beautiful day to do so. 

This list is co-authored with Aled Williams who joined me on the walk for a summit celebration consisting of a mince pie and a giant green balloon.  The list takes in 630 hills with their qualification being all Welsh hills 500m and above with 15m minimum drop. 

Completing the Welsh Highlands - Uchafion Cymru on the summit of Esgair Garthen

It has been a long journey to completion taking 19½ years since I purposely bagged my first Welsh 500m P15 hill.  When originally compiling this list I wondered if I would ever complete it, as lists taking in so many hills require a certain amount of determination and life and other stuff seems to occasionally get in the way. 

Many years ago I had chosen Esgair Garthen (SN 825 642) as my final hill and it did not disappoint.  This hill is positioned in the central heartland of the Elenydd, which takes in some of the wildest and most remote hills in Wales.  The day proved wonderful with perfect conditions with hardly a breath of breeze, frost encrusted grassland and stunning blue skies above. 

It was appropriate for Aled to join me on this last hill as he has added so much to this list since becoming co-author, with place-name research adding many more names for these hills, and discovering new qualifying hills via LIDAR analysis and over recent times encouraging me towards completion.  There have also been many friends over the intervening years since original compilation to join me on these hills, leaving memories aplenty of good times shared and good hills visited. 

 

Myrddyn Phillips (26^th November 2023)