Through the Ages on Tal y fan

Who would have thought there was so much Archaeological history on one mountain!

The hills of Snowdonia have been inhabited for at least 6000 years and modern day hikers and mountaineers are walking in the footsteps of our ancestors but rarely notice their remains. Not this day though, thanks to Jane Kenney a Senior Archeologist from the Gwynedd Archaeological Trust who took us on a grand tour of Tal y Fan an outlying peak of the Carneddau and an area that is particularly rich in monuments.

We saw Neolithic tombs, Bronze Age stone circles, Iron Age settlements, remains of the Roman road, and medieval fields and farmsteads; providing a chronological perspective on familiar landscapes. Our journey took us through the periods of Roman, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Medieval all in a day! We could even see over to Graiglwyd, near Llanfairfechan, north Wales, where the intrusive igneous rock was removed, over a period of about 1,000 years, for making stone tools.

All rounded off with homemade cakes and tea from Belinda! Superb day and I’m sure we’ll have another one next year!

Paul Poole
North Wales Regional Group Co-ordinator.

Excellent walk around Tal y Fan in the Carneddau with Jane Kenney of the Gwynedd Archaeological Trust this afternoon in Autumn weather today. Thanks to Belinda and Paul for organising the walk. It was well worth the effort of getting to Rowen by 9.30am to have learnt a lot about north Wales archaeology and seen lots of new sites on the flanks of Tal y Fan. I'll be going back very soon to see the granodiorite rock face where, for a period of up to 1,000 years, rock was hacked off to provide fragments that could be shaped into tools.

Paul Gannon.
Author of Rock Trails