You can take in the views or walk up to Twmbarlwm hill fort and its commanding views from the Rhodfa Mynydd/Mountain Walk car park. We are working with a local community group to develop a new ‘sensory garden’ next to the car park for all visitors to enjoy.

Mountain Walk to Twmbarlwm

To reach Twmbarlwm go through the kissing gate and follow the path through the bracken. Join a track on the ridge, bearing right, which leads to the prominent hilltop bump in the landscape – Twmbarlwm hill fort. Return the same way. This route is on common land so please keep dogs on a lead as stock graze here.

Views from the Car Park

Ty’n-ffynon Farm (Built 1873)

This farm was built next to a ‘spring that never fails’ (‘ffynon’ means spring), which was always a mixed farm of dairy cattle, sheep and potatoes. The land is now used just for grazing. The farm generates its own electricity and is still reliant on ‘the spring that never fails’.

Rhyswg Fach

The ruined site of what was a 16th century traditional Welsh farm longhouse, built so that animals and people lived together under one roof Rhyswg Fach was one of three farms built on the old Grange lands of the Cistercian Abbey at Llantarnam. King Henry VIII dissolved the monastery in 1536 and took the lands.

Pen-y-Pant

Pen-y-Pant is the site of what was once traditionally thought to be a chapel, but this is likely to have been after the monks had left the Rhyswg.

Twmbarlwm hillfort

Twmbarlwm was once a centre of the Silurian Celts who fought a 25 year war with Rome. Some of these forts have been closely studied revealing ramparts, gateways, many round-houses, grain stores, and corrals for cattle.