Twenty Six - Cardiff - Garth Hill (307m)

View down to Taff's Well

This is a lovely spot so close to the city, though incredibly windy on the day we were up there. It’s quite a pronounced “lump” so you can see why it was the inspiration for the book (and later film) “The Englishman who went up a hill but came down a mountain”.

Trig pillar at the top.

Visibility wasn’t great but on a clear day you can see Weston-Super-Mare and Devon across the Bristol Channel.

Cardiff city, the Bristol Channel, & the
Somerset coast just visible in the distance.

Twenty Five - Vale of Glamorgan - Pantylladron (137m)

Catching some rays! Sheep grazing
 under "solar farm" panels

We did get this a bit wrong – don’t follow the low walled stile with the yellow footpath sign (in the second photo), as the path you need for the “peak” is slightly to the right across the neighbouring field through a gate.

Gentle farmland rather
than rugged terrain!

A path took us alongside some solar panels and some obligingly photogenic sheep up to the highest point which is in the middle of the field. Not exciting, but quite easily done.

Trig pillar with St Hillary
TV mast in distance

Twenty Four - Newport - Wentwood (309m)

Trig pillar visible amongst
the felled conifer plantation

We parked at Cadira Beeches car park with lovely beech woods taking the place of scruffy pine plantations up here. There also seem to be lots of white van men here today – including a posse from Western Power tending to the comms mast and getting their 4x4 stuck in the mud in the process. But regardless, this is a nice walk and if it hadn’t have been getting dark we would have spent a bit more time wondering around these pretty woods.


J checking her bearings!

At the trig point there’s a great view across the Severn estuary, although today the visibility wasn’t great. No pub today – we have some shopping to do and work in the morning so promise ourselves a pint next weekend instead.

Bristol Channel & the Second Severn Crossing
just visible in the late afternoon mist

Twenty Three - Leicestershire - Bardon Hill (278m)

First sneak peak of what
lies ahead on the climb up

“Well I can safely say we would never have come here…”says W, as, in the East Midlands, far from home, we park the car on an out of the way housing estate. But actually this is quite impressive; we’re walking through woods and then up the side of what used to be a volcano.

Trig pillar at the highest point
of what remains of Bardon Hill

At the top, just beyond the trig pillar, peering into its crater, the dust is now emanating from a quarry. Apparently volcanic rock is just the thing for tarmacking roads.

The view beyond the trig point

Looking right down into the
quarry workings

Quite an impressive "hole"!

The sun came out as we watched the trucks and diggers charging about like a humungous toy set. I look at the nearby houses and wonder if this might be a good place for a window cleaning business.

Enormous Caterpillar trucks look like
kid's Tonka toys from this height!