Twenty Eight - Flintshire - Moel Famau (554m)

View from near the top looking
down Offa's Dyke path

“Moel Famau” means “Mother mountain” in Welsh, and it’s the highest summit in the Clwydian Range. In our ignorance we’d never heard of these mountains and their country park , which are part of an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, but lots of people clearly knew it well. With it being a glorious cold and sunny day and the last Sunday of the school holidays, the car parks and the mountain itself were busy with people and their dogs and children, all having a lovely time. (Apart from the poor soul who had to reverse back out of the Moel Farnau car park at the rear of a convoy of cars queuing behind him because he didn’t have £2 for the barrier.) Missed our dog today – as we were on our way back from a stay in Manchester we’d left him behind, which was a shame as he would have enjoyed this one. 

Trig point at top - although not the highest point

We made our way steadily up the path to the summit – very easy to follow between the frosty fir trees , with views of the Dee estuary beginning to emerge to our right. At the top we join the Offa’s Dyke Path and everyone else who has come up to admire the views of Snowdon from the Jubilee Tower .It’s actually just the base of the Tower – the money ran out before it was finished and then high winds demolished the bits which had been erected, but it works pretty well as a viewing platform with room for everyone to charge about appreciating the scenery from different angles. Eventually it was too cold to stay up there any longer and we made our way back down along Offa’s Dyke until we get to Bwlch Penbarra, from where it’s a short walk back to the car along the road. 

Jubilee Tower - the actual highest point

Twenty Seven - Warwickshire - Ebrington Hill (261m)

Radio transmitters near the top

This is supposed to be part of a potentially glorious walk, but today I can’t say we really did it justice. In our defence, it was wet, cold, and extremely misty, and we had somewhere else to be (next to the fire in the bar of the excellent Kings Arms – although coffee and hot choc were the order of the day on this occasion).

Trig point on a wet & misty day

Flooded paths

So we did just have a swift yomp up the track from the car park at Hidcote Manor (also absolutely lovely, we were later informed, so we’ll have to go back to visit here too) towards some radio transmitters and up to glumly inspect our goal – an unexciting ploughed field on the other side of a gate, with no prospect of lovely distant views. We do find a proper plum coloured “Restricted Byway” arrow sign – which according to our daughter, who is undertaking her Gold D of E award, are apparently quite rare. And that is genuinely as exciting as it got!

Highest point is just through the
gate in the ploughed field