Completing
the Welsh Highlands – Uchafion Cymru
UKHillwalking Article
UKHillwalking recently
published an article on my completion of the 630 hills that make up the listing
of the Welsh Highlands – Uchafion Cymru.
The original article and a link to it on the UKHillwalking website appear
below.
Completing the Welsh Highlands - Uchafion
Cymru
Covering
630 hills, from 500m lumps right up to the summit of Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon)
itself, the Welsh Highlands - Uchafion Cymru is a hill list on a grand
scale. Myrddyn Phillips co-authors the list, and is also the first to complete
it, a process that took nearly 20 years. What's the attraction of a bagging
task this epic? Allow Myrddyn to explain...
For many years I hill walked with proverbial
blinkers on, concentrating in the main on the Welsh 2000-footers. These hills
were repeated many times, and even though I sought out new ground via different
ridges and valleys, the need for variety eventually won out. The lower hills
beckoned.
Winter on Foel Meirch |
When repeating the Welsh Nuttalls I took up the challenge of
finding new qualifying hills by using a basic levelling staff to measure drop,
resulting in a number of hills entering this list through this rather esoteric
aspect of hill walking. My interest in surveying and finding new
qualifying hills now transferred to the Deweys, resulting in more Welsh hills
entering this list. When I completed the Welsh Deweys my interest in surveying
was extended to the 500m tops with 15m minimum drop.
This enabled me to venture on to new ground and investigate
different hills. It also gave me opportunity to compile a new listing of Welsh
hills; one that would fulfil that investigative instinct as well as fulfilling
the surveying aspect of my hill walking which had become ever more important
for me.
Now co-authored with Aled Williams, the resulting list is named
Welsh Highlands – Uchafion Cymru.
The hills range from forested summits in the Elenydd such as Gnol Ddu |
The List
Wales is blessed with many hills and a widely varied landscape,
giving plenty of scope for people who enjoy getting away from the masses. The
Welsh Highlands – Uchafion Cymru list fulfils this urge, giving plenty of hills
to investigate in some of the most wild and remote areas of Wales.
The criteria for this list are all Welsh hills at and above 500m
in height, that have 15m minimum drop. Accompanying the main list is a sub
category of hills, these are the Welsh Highland Subs and take in all Welsh
hills 500m and above in height that have 10m and more and below 15m of drop.
The end result is a comprehensive listing to the Welsh highlands. The list is
now co-authored with Aled Williams and as of writing this article there are 630
hills that qualify for the main list from the 500.5m summit of Moel Bowydd to
the 1084.8m summit of Yr Wyddfa, with the accompanying sub list taking in 250
hills.
...to the mighty Yr Wyddfa |
Why do it?
Many of my friends hill walk, but only a few are hill baggers. The
latter are people who purposely visit hills to fulfil a greater challenge of
completing a hill list. A mantra of sorts is often given by hill baggers to legitimise
their obsessional quality; this simply states that ticking off hills in a list
can take you to places that you otherwise might never visit.
This is one reason why a hill list can benefit a hillwalker.
However, hill lists themselves have greatly benefited over recent times with
the advent of independent surveyors wandering the hills with GNSS receivers and
level and staffs in hand determining drop and absolute height of hills.
Numerical and positional data have also benefited from the advent of the LIDAR
(Light Detection & Ranging) technique. Both of these have
revolutionised hill listing with a plethora of reclassifications involving a
multitude of lists, including the Munros, Majors, Corbetts, Grahams, Marilyns,
Humps, Nuttalls, Hewitts, Deweys, Y Pedwarau and many more besides including
the Welsh Highlands – Uchafion Cymru. Simply put, there is no objective listing
to British hills that has not benefited from the use of independent surveyors
and LIDAR analysis.
The Hills
Using a 15m minimum drop criterion gives the prospect of listing
many more hills, which increases diversity in the list. This drop value also
works well for Wales, and especially so for the higher tier of the Welsh
highlands.
Esgair Pentanau - not many people come this way, and a list is a perfect pretext to visit |
However, out of all the individual hills that qualify there is a
hill group that for me stands out amongst its peers; this is the land I know as
the Elenydd. This area takes in the central part of Wales, much of it
relatively remote. Few fences enclose this land, giving it an unrelenting openness.
The hills of the Elenydd are not dramatic in sculptured aspect, but they have a
beauty all to themselves and one that benefits from the criteria used in this
list as those small prominence hills are seemingly dotted all over this
landscape.
The Elenydd also hosts the large expanse of the Tywi forest, an
infestation of conifer plantation that takes in swathes of land that must at
one time have been beautiful open hillside. Many qualifying hills are situated
in conifer plantation; some are horrendous to visit with a literal tree bash to
get to their elusive summits, whilst others such as Gnol Ddu (SN 823 599) can
be sublime to visit in favourable conditions.
Uchafion Cymru includes all the greats, such as Arenig Fawr |
Progress
It took 19½ years from the day I purposely visited my first Welsh 500m P15 hill to the day that I completed. I suppose you could say I made steady progress. Steady or not, other stuff such as life occasionally gets in the way of the more serious business of hill bagging. By October 2010 I only had ten qualifying hills to visit. Due to those pesky independent surveyors and LIDAR analysis the hills to visit kept increasing over the intervening years with a mass of new ones found. It required a concerted effort to finish the remaining hills in this list.
Moel y Llyn in the Pumlumon hills |
Completion
Toward the start of 2023 I decided to concentrate on the few
remaining hills I had left. Many of these were situated in the Tywi forest and
these would require good weather and open forest tracks. Others were newly
discovered through the use of LIDAR. My third to last hill is one such example.
This is situated between Moel Hebog and Moel yr Ogof in Eryri in north-west
Wales and its summit consists of a small rocky ridge that was decidedly greasy
when I visited, and with a wind blowing across the tops I managed to fall down
its rocky southern side and remember the shock of seeing rock whizzing past my
eyes. Thankfully I ground to a halt with only impressive bruising and the shock
of what had just happened as reminders. I was also thankful I did not fall on
the northern side as this had a sheer drop down on to rock which would no doubt
have been seriously problematic.
During this year my companion on all of these walks has been Aled
Williams, the co-author of this list. As well as discovering many of the new
qualifying hills Aled has encouraged me towards completion.
When initially compiling this list I remember looking at the
Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 Explorer map and specifically the three mile long
easterly ridge leading to the summit of Esgair Garthen (SN 825 642), and
thinking that this hill would be a good one to finish on. And so it proved.
630 summit sin the bag! Myrddyn on his final peak, Esgair Garthen |
It was decidedly chilly when I set off with the sun rising only
when initial height was gained, appearing as a burst of light over mist that
hugged near hillsides and meandererd over the waters of the Claerwen Reservoir.
Like so many of the Elenydd hills Esgair Garthen consists of grassland. This
can be tough to walk through if no path is evident; thankfully a quad bike
track eased passage and took me all the way to the summit. At this time of the
morning the grassland was frosted and any bog frozen. The conditions were
perfect, with no breath of breeze and tranquility only disturbed by an
occasional sheep. The frosted scene was emphasised by blue sky above. I reached
the summit at 10.15am with a smile on my face. I had done it; a long journey
now completed. Aled joined me 45 minutes later having visited the two sub
hills. I celebrated with a mince pie and a giant green balloon.
Many friends have joined me on these hills over the intervening
years since initial compilation to the summit celebration atop Esgair Garthen,
leaving memories aplenty of good times shared and good hills visited. For that
I am thankful.
For the original article published on the UKHillwalking website
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