The second day of the trip at the watershed of the Lleyn Peninsula at Llyn Cwmystradllyn.
31.7.2020 - Moel Ddu 553m (Marilyn).
Just a few kilometres north of Porthmadog is Llyn Cwmystradllyn and nearby Moel Ddu, another Marilyn at 553m. After a hard 22km yesterday I decided to do this the quickest way possible. It didn’t work out quite as easy as I had hoped!
After not being able to find any parking on the Eastern side on the A498 Porthmadog to Beddgelert road I decided to park at the small car park at the dam head on Llyn Cwmystradlyn. Plenty of room there for about ten vehicles and even my MWB Merc Sprinter.
Anyway off I went over the dam head and NE along the Eastern side of the lake and then headed SE steeply uphill towards Moel Ddu. Now the first kilometre was very wet and hard going. It is boggy and you have to negotiate tufty knee high grass. Doing this in winter would be very very wet. Today though it was a very hot morning to be going steeply uphill through all this.
After about two kilometres you negotiate a couple of walls and then go over the false crest of spot height 534. Here you will then have a beautiful panorama of the Snowdon range and a view of Moel Ddu proper right in front of you. It really is a fine little summit…or twin summit as there are two cairned summits with a stone wall in the small valley in between. I went to both cairns and admired the great views all around of Snowdon, Porthmadog and the Lleyn Peninsula. Simply stunning.
Not wanting to go back the way I came I headed NW towards the old slate quarry. Nothing difficult but quite steep going but the views are still superb. There is a bridle way running down hill to the West which literally parallels the edge of the slate quarry. Follow this all the way down where eventually you pass a big impressive quarry wall and then there is a gate immediately after. After the gate there is a three kilometre hike along a decent track all the way back along the Northern side of the lake back to the start. All in all a decent outing!
Parking: The dam head on Llyn Cwmystradlyn. Plenty of room there for about ten vehicles and even my MWB Merc Sprinter.
Route Summary: Boggy lakeside paths, tufty grass, steep mountain ascent and good ridleways/tracks. Great views. Would be a very boggy hike in winter.
Route Statistics: 7.5km’s, 380m of height gain done in an all in time of 2hr 40mins. Quite slow as the going was hard in places and the weather hot.
GPX files: For gpx files go to the Peakbagger website by following these links and go to the bottom right hand of the page and click ‘Download this GPS track as a GPX file.’
Ascent Entry on Peakbagger: Moel Ddu
Route overview using ViewRanger
Parking at the Dam Head.
The first half of the route.
The second half of the route.
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