Moelfryn

About Moelfryn

Standing at 522m in the so-called 'Desert of Wales,' Moelfryn offers a grandstand view of the Elan Valley reservoirs without the suffocating crowds found further north. It’s a rounded, grassy affair where the silence is only broken by the wind and the judgmental bleating of resident sheep.

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Did You Know?

• •The hill sits within the historic commote of Cwmwd Deuddwr, a medieval administrative area that now forms part of the vast and sparsely populated Elenydd plateau.
• •From the summit, you can overlook the Victorian engineering of the Elan Valley dams, which were famously built to supply Birmingham with clean water.
• •Moelfryn is officially classified as a Dewey, a list of peaks over 500 meters that hikers tackle when they have finally run out of larger, more famous mountains.
• •The name translates literally to 'Bare Hill,' a naming convention that suggests the ancient Welsh were far too busy surviving to bother with poetic flourishes.
• •Navigation here usually involves a high-stakes game of 'Is that a path or a sheep track?'—a game you will inevitably lose while sinking ankle-deep into a hidden peat bog.