Where the Mellte and Sychryd rivers meet at Pontneddfechan, a great prow of pale limestone rears out of the woods: Craig y Ddinas, the “fortress rock”, with an Iron Age fort on its flat crown and climbers strung across its faces most fine weekends.
For climbers it’s one of South Wales’ best-known sport crags — more than a hundred bolted routes on compact, steeply-tilted limestone, mostly in the mid-to-hard grades. Not a beginner’s venue, but spectacular to watch from the car park below with a flask of coffee.
The gorges either side are South Wales’ canyoning heartland: several licensed outdoor providers meet right here for gorge-walking and canyoning trips — sliding, scrambling and (safely) leaping down the Sychryd and Mellte. Book with a guide; the rivers here are not for freelancing.
Prefer to keep your feet dry? The short Sychryd Trail is buggy- and wheelchair-friendly and reaches a lovely set of cascades in twenty minutes; a longer, tougher trail heads over the hill towards Sgwd yr Eira.
Worth knowing
- Legend places King Arthur and his knights asleep in a cavern beneath the rock, surrounded by gold, waiting to be woken.
- Welsh folklore also names Craig y Ddinas as the last stronghold of the fairies — the final place the Tylwyth Teg held court in Wales.
- The crag holds 100+ bolted sport routes, with classics like Berlin (F7a+) on the Main Cliff.
- The free car park sits inside a 19th-century limestone quarry, and the paths pass old silica and gunpowder workings.