Look up from The Old Exchange’s patio and you’ll see him: Cribarth, the “Sleeping Giant”, whose ridgeline looks for all the world like a colossus lying on his back above the valley.
The climb starts from the village itself — no car required — winding up through old quarry workings onto open moorland, with Bronze Age burial cairns on the tops and enormous views up the Tawe valley and down towards Swansea.
It’s the local’s mountain: even on a bank holiday when Pen y Fan is a procession, you can have the giant almost to yourself.
Worth knowing
- The summit stands at 428 metres, and the trig point is popularly said to sit on the giant’s face.
- It’s one of the most quarried uplands in Wales — around 30 quarries and some 17 km of horse-drawn tramroads were built here between 1794 and the 1890s.
- The tramroads were the work of John Christie, a London entrepreneur who made his fortune in the indigo trade and bought the Great Forest of Brecon in 1819.
- Limestone, silica and rottenstone from the hill fed the copper, iron and tin works of the Swansea Valley below.