Mountain rank by height: 181 out of 188
Height: 2,011ft | 613m
Region: Central Wales
Grid ref: SN 91795 59052
Gorllwyn is a 613m high Mountain in Central Wales above the Elan Valley. It is fairly close to Drygarn Fawr, although the walk between the two is definitely not an easy one. I walked this via the route above, with Gorllwyn being the third summit of the day – a day that was proving to be a real slog.
The path from Drygarn Fawr starts off well, but at the point you cross the route up the path becomes a lot less distinctive and is easy to lose and often you’re just vaguely trying to follow anything that looks like a path, avoiding as best you can the frequent boggy areas.
Eventually you can see the large cairn on top (not at the summit trig point) and then the summit trig point, which is also a kind of cairn / shelter. You just head as best you can in the direction of the left cairn which is home to the trig point.
I didn’t have the will power to walk to the slightly lower cairn, after running out of water at around 7 miles in by this point all I had left was one cake of Coke Zero so I didn’t want to do any additional miles, especially without paths.
The views were good, the trig point and cairn offered some decent photos, but this part of Wales just seems very bleak and empty. I was totally alone and the lack of paths just made everything worse. It is hard to explain really, looking at the photos it seems like a pleasant walk and nice landscape, but being there it was just something different.
Maybe it was the nature of the unrelenting boggy and uneven ground, that every mile felt like 5 and the distances took what felt like an eternity to cover. Not a mountain I can ever see myself returning to, but I am glad I did it.
