Moelfryn Mawr

Rising above the Elan Valley's Caban-coch Reservoir, this rounded Cambrian summit offers a quiet escape from the busier lakeside paths. The terrain consists of typical mid-Wales moorland—rough grass and heather—providing clear, earned views across to the higher domes of Drygarn Fawr and the wild, rolling plateaus of the Elan Estate.

• •The name is Welsh for 'Great Bare Hill', with 'Moel' specifically describing a treeless, rounded summit—a characteristic feature of the Central Wales uplands shaped by glacial action and centuries of sheep grazing.
• •The hill sits within the 70-square-mile Elan Estate, land famously purchased by the Birmingham Corporation in the 1890s to create the reservoirs that still provide the city’s water supply today.
• •From the summit, walkers can look directly down onto the submerged site of Nantgwyllt House, a mansion where the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley once lived, now lost beneath the waters of the Caban-coch Reservoir.
• •While the name translates to 'Great Bare Hill', you may find it is considerably less bare than your trousers after navigating the local peat hags on a typical damp afternoon.