In northern Pembrokeshire, the Preseli Hills provide a thrilling insight into prehistoric civilizations and the runic messages they left behind
“You have to be careful,” warns Phil Wheeler, host at Preseli Hills Cottages, as we huddle over mugs of tea and an OS map tracing the route of the Golden Road, a seven-mile ramble along the spine of the hills. “I was up there the other day and I couldn’t see further ahead than this in the fog,” he says, his hand a few inches in front of his face. “Lots of the landscape features look alike, which can make navigation tricky. But there’s a special atmosphere up there. You feel things.
The spectral mist seems almost suited to the Preseli Hills. Tors litter the landscape like long-buried dragons. And the crags appear less like hills and more like the ghosts of them — vanishing, reappearing, suddenly creeping up. All is silent but for the wind howling around the ragged heights and my own muffled curse as I step into a bog. There’s nobody else here but I have the eerie sense of being watched.
Tranquil is putting it mildly. The hills feel utterly forgotten on my walk. I lose the trail as the mist closes in like a scene from a gothic horror movie. There’s a rock resembling a prostrating man in prayer, another like the skeleton of a stegosaurus, one that’s like the horned devil himself. It’s probable, certainly, as all things are in a region swirling so intensely in myth. I manage to locate Foel Cwmcerwyn, the highest point in the Preselis at 536 metres. In the Welsh epic The Mabinogion, the valley below is where King Arthur battled Twrch Trwyth, an enchanted wild boar from Ireland. Nearby, the razorback tor of Carn Bica presides over Bedd Arthur , an unusual oval-shaped ring of stones said to be the final resting place of King Arthur and his knights.
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