Foel Fras: Carneddau Ponies, and an Air Crash

I wasn't specifically heading for Foel Fras on this walk, but wondering if I might make it a little further, to find an air crash site on Llwytmor, nearer the coast. I was strangely tired that day, though, and decided it was taking me too long, so I settled for Foel Fras, where an Avro Anson Mk.I. crashed during the night in July, 1944.

It was a fun walk, although the tiredness hung on me, making all my limbs feel heavy. It felt like a bit of a struggle all the way, and I was glad to be coming down again in the end. Joys along the way included a curious herd of Carneddau ponies, and a sudden descent of mist, leaving me in splendid isolation, briefly, on the top of Foel Fras.

We, Idiots No. 1 and 2™ and I, headed up the track past Pen y Gadair on a reasonably fine day, although there were some low clouds gathering over the mountain. 

Past the stile to Pen y Castell, the track continues along the side of the hill before dipping down.

Idiot No. 2™ seemed more keen on cutting down to Dulyn, but I wanted to go higher than that.

The footpath crosses the Afon Ddu (OS grid ref SH 7183 6800) next to a rather angular sheepfold, where track, river, and fences all come together as one. At wetter times of year it's just a case of getting your feet wet.

Is this a track or a stream? Technically I think it's the track - the river comes down at right angles - but the water doesn't seem to care.

The sheepfold on the Afon Ddu (Black River).

The river is well named, cutting a black gully through the peaty land.

We sat and rested for a while, after cutting up across the contour lines towards the summit of Foel Fras.

Some of the fence posts up on these slopes are things of beauty. Cracked and greyed by weather and age, speckled with grey-green lichen, with the steel fence wire making a blood-rust contrast against the cooler colours. These are the glas and coch of the Welsh landscape - blues that owe more to greens and grey, and reds that owe more to the soft orange-browns of dead bracken. No wonder so many places names use these descriptors. 

On the way up we met a herd of Carneddau ponies. Sometimes I can feel a little nervous of them (probably due to my childhood of being chased by a belligerent Welsh Mountain pony), but in the main they're curious but not that bothered about you. Just take care not to get between adults and foals or the stallion and his herd.

These ponies were on the other side of the fence, so I felt pretty easy with them. They could probably jump it if they wanted to, but they showed no desire to. 

In the far distance, behind the ponies and the falling slopes of the hills, the Afon Conwy is a little ribbon of silver heading to the sea.

The horses kept coming closer then shying away, made nervous in part by the dogs. This first video shows how wary they were, their wariness vying with their curiosity.

They kept coming back to the fence again, fascinated by our presence.

I sat down by the fence to make myself less of a threat to them. Then I thought that singing to them might calm and intrigue them. I don't claim to be a great singer, and I was out of breath, with Idiot No. 2™ choosing to lick my throat every now and then, but they did seem intrigued. This video shows them listening with fascination.

The ponies came very close, just standing and listening, then moving aside to let others come to the front.

 

There are too many photos of the horses but it's hard to decide to delete any because it's so fascinating seeing their individuality and their social relations. 

 

In the background, one of the big foals has gone to her mother, and they touch noses in greeting.

The nose touching was a prelude to suckling.

Eventually I got up and the horses ran off across the hill. I don't know how long they would have stayed otherwise.

We carried on up the hill, following the fence until it became a stone wall for a short time. We were looking for the site of a crashed Avro Anson Mk.I. 

The crash site isn't far from the stone wall, at about 900m above sea level.

The main bits of wreckage I saw were at Ordnance Survey Grid Reference SH 69622 67587. There's still a moderate amount of wreckage here but other sites show more. Possibly this site, like many others, has been plundered for souvenirs. 

 

A lot of these crashes happen during bad visibility in Welsh winters, but Avro Anson Mk.I MG804 of No.8 (Observer) Advanced Flying Unit crashed on July 12th, 1944, during a night-time navigation training flight. One man was killed, Wireless Operator Albert Francis Standring, out of the crew of five.

In other internet posts an 11' long wing section is also visible at the wreck site, close to these remains. Although I looked around quite diligently, I couldn't see it. It must have been taken away either by weather or human hands.

This site provides photos and an accurate grid reference and longitude and latitude for the crash. The 'Peak District Air Crashes' site gives the full names and ranks of those on the plane, and the circumstances of the crash.

 

I don't know nearly enough about planes to know what all the pieces of wreckage are, so I present them here without comment.

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I didn't notice as I was looking at the wreckage that the cloud had suddenly come down. Abruptly, from it being a fairly nice day, visibility was almost gone. 

I carried on up the mountain with the reassurance that I could follow the fence for guidance if necessary, since it goes right over the top of the mountain with the path following it all the way.

This bare patch of stones may be one of the burnt patches from the plane mentioned on the Peak District Air Crashes site. The plane did not set on fire, but was deliberately burnt later.

These little half-streams-half-ponds look even more dark and eerie under lowering mist.

Another stile on my route, although not one I had to use since I was carrying straight on along the wall. I just like taking photos of stiles.

The flat top of Foel Fras is an odd place, scattered with stones like the top of Carnedd Llewelyn, but with the occasional rock spiking up as if thrown down by a tantruming giant. In this kind of mist, caught out of the corner of the eye, at first they can look like a person standing motionless on the hill.

These mountains seem even more ancient when you consider the incredible length of time necessary for cycles of frost and rain and heat to split and fracture these great rocks into shards and leave them scattered like this on the mountain top.

I reached the trig point, and a little cairn just next to it. At 944 metres, Foel Fras is the eleventh highest mountain in Wales, and, apparently, is a good place to watch the spring and autumn migration of the dotterel. There weren't so many birds visible today, though. 

Things got a little strange here. I was listening to an audiobook as I walked, but then I became aware of voices in the mist. A person appeared, and then another couple of people, the first I'd seen on the entire walk. They didn't speak or acknowledge my presence at all on the summit of the mountain. So I carried on walking, feeling vaguely uneasy. Perhaps it was the mist unsettling us all.

I was struck by this lovely symmetrical tear-drop of grass.

We carried on walking down the other side of Foel Fras towards Drum, the strangely non-communicative walkers ahead of us.

As we got lower we came down below the cloud, and views became visible again, with a glimpse of Ynys Mon over the Menai Straits. It was nice to find the rest of the world still existed.

The Conwy Valley appeared on the other side as we got down towards the saddle between the mountains.

Llyn Anafon became visible over the edge of the slope. The lake has been a reservoir since 1931, but it seems that Dŵr Cymru plan to reduce the disused reservoir back to its natural capacity.

We were deliberately hanging back a little so as not to catch up the recalcitrant walkers, but they stopped for a break.

Instead of going up towards Drum, we took the stile over the fence and cut to the right, down between Foel Fras and Drum and back towards Pen y Castell.

A beautifully shaped sheepfold on the edge of Foel Lwyd - that being the Foel Lwyd on the end of Drum, not the one on the end of Tal y Fan.

We headed around the edge of Pen y Castell rather than gaining elevation that we'd only have to lose, to get back to the track we came out on, running from the Pen y Gaer car park, past Pen y Gadair. From the stile in the distance we were back on ground already covered. Tired, I put my phone away and concentrated on getting home.

The Lost Cottages - Pen y Banc, Caerhun Parish

This little building sits very near to Llys y Gwynt, the gamekeeper's cottage near Hen Efail and Ty'n y Groes, but very few details can be found about it since it seems to be an industrial building rather than a residential property. The place is marked as 'Pen y Banc' on the 1888-1913 map, and sits at Ordnance Survey Grid Reference SH 7796 7286. It is built on the edge of, and accessed from, the small plot of land on the hill summit which surrounds Llys y Gwynt.

Although it's very close to Llys y Gwynt, because of its position just down off the edge of the hill the building is hardly visible from the gamekeeper's cottage. A track on this map appears to connect the two buildings directly, branching off the main track past Llys y Gwynt to reach Pen y Banc. Another track leads from between the two buildings down to the farm of Tan y Bryn. The speculated history of Tan y Bryn and its possible connection with Llys y Gwynt is detailed in my post about the gamekeeper's cottage.

On one side of the hill is the Afon Conwy, and the important ferry crossing of Tal y Cafn, while on the other side runs the main road to Conwy.

There is a single possible sign of habitation in the census, where Pen y Banc is mentioned just before Tan y Bryn in 1861, in the occupation of wood man John Hughes, 38, his wife Jane, 36, daughter Ellin, 2, and daughter Jane, possibly two months old. Llys y Gwynt isn't mentioned in this census, though. Is it possible this family are living there, but using the name of Pen y Banc? Or were they living in this building that appears to have no domestic features?

See a short video of the place here.

The majority of what appears to be the building is actually a high-walled yard, with a small building at the west end which is still partly roofed.

The yard is on the left, eastern side, with the building on the right in the west. On the south side there seems to be another cell that would originally have been roofed, while on the far right, at the westernmost extent of the building, are the ruined remains of what looks like a forge.

Some little distance from the building a roof ridge tile lies on the ground. It's entirely possible this could have come from either this industrial building or the nearby gamekeeper's cottage. The tile didn't seem to have a maker's mark.

Inside the yard, where the walls are at least six feet tall, with a small grate set in the bottom on the southern side. My husband has suggested the high walls might have been to keep horses in, with the grate there for drainage on washing out the yard. We think this place might have been a farrier's. 

Looking out of the yard through the ruined entrance. The scots pines by Llys y Gwynt are visible on top of the hill.

This grate in the side of the yard goes through to the little building on the southern side, meaning the yard would drain into the building. This brings into question the relation of the yard to the building, and the dates of the two features.

On the western side of the yard is the main building, which is split into two unequal cells, the larger being on the left.

The door frame survives in the left door, although the bottom has rotted away.

The doorway to the smaller cell is built with some very impressive dressed cornerstones. 

The larger room has a little window in it, looking onto the yard. I couldn't see a sign of a frame here, but there may have been one once. 

The bottom of the door frame for the left hand room, with iron hinge, and the bottom lost through rotting.

Inside the bigger room, looking into the yard, with the top hinge in the door frame.

This room is still mostly roofed and retains a lot of the plaster on the walls where not exposed to the weather.

The little window from inside, with a rather nice windowsill, and no sign of a window frame.

At least two walls of the room, the northern wall which divides it from the smaller room, and the western wall dividing it from the forge, have a beam built in, at about three feet from the ground level.

The beam in the northern wall, exposed by fallen plaster, leading to a corresponding beam in the western wall.

The western wall beam leading to the southern wall, which doesn't appear to have similar beam built into it. 

A look up at the roof which seems completely intact over the eastern side, but half gone on the western.

The north end of the western part of the roof has fared a little better than the south. It's the south which tends to catch the weather. 

Even the joists are starting to rot away at this southern end.

The wall is also starting to show damage. Perhaps this ruined bit is under where the roof first started to let in water.

Just to the left of the doorway was this shape in the earth. Perhaps it's just a random shape, but it seemed worth photographing.

A roof ridge tile lies on the fallen slates, very much like the one found outside.

The beam over this door is still relatively sound.

The doorway to the right hand, northern room seems much more perilous, the beam bowing under the pressure of the stones above.

Inside this narrow room, not much more than four feet wide, the same built in beam runs along the back, western, wall.

The roof here is partly intact and partly held together by ivy.

For this room the west facing roof plane has survived better than the east.

A couple of bits of wood are built into the northern wall.

A closer look at these two pieces of wood, which look as if they may have had nails driven into their centres. 

At roughly the same height as the wood, a little along the wall, the plaster shows damage. At first I thought it was another block of wood but I think it's just damage coincidentally at the same height.

A look at the bowing beam over the door from the inside.

The layers of what is possibly lime whitewash can be seen clearly on the wall in this room.

The roof over the western side is almost entirely gone.

Standing on the east side of the building, one can see the high walled yard and the little adjoining building just to the left.

 

It's hard to tell because of the ivy, but this may have had a sloping lean-to roof. 

Inside, this area is pretty much featureless, but the 1888-1913 map does suggest it was roofed at that time.

 

Looking along the south wall of the yard, which makes the north wall of this building.

A view of the grate in the yard from the other side. It's about a foot from the ground on this side.

The end wall seems to show a lean-to style slope, through the ivy.

To the left of the doorway into this little building, a piece of bent iron is embedded in the wall.

A look at that piece of iron from below.

What appears to be a broken quarry tile on the ground, possibly evidence of flooring in the building.

Another piece of bent metal about 18" long lies on the ground by the doorway.

From the south, this is the end wall of the western building, with the lower wall of the possible forge to the left. The southern building extension is to the right. The large stones have probably been cleared more recently from the ploughed field which leads down from the building. 

The corner where the main building meets the southern building. 

The wall to the left is of the possible forge. Directly on other side is where the fire would have been. Conversely, there's no sign of a fireplace in any of the other cells. This section of wall looks slightly different, as if it were built and rendered at a different time.

A little to the east of the high walled yard is what appears to be a well, covered in old gates.

I don't know the depth of the water, but someone obviously considers it deep enough to warrant a cover.

Round at the west end of the building, this is the site of the possible forge. Note the letterbox sized slot in the wall. Perhaps coincidentally, there's a change in the stones in the wall at about this point, from larger ones to smaller.

 

This slot doesn't go through the wall all the way, and there was no sign of it on the inside.

A lot of roof slates litter the ground here, where the floor to the possible forge may have been, probably from the roof of the main building. There are signs on the ground, level with the slot in the wall, that this was the doorway into this area, with the wall, very ruined, visible to the right. This makes this area shorter from north wall to south than the main building.

Only a very low wall remains on the west side of this cell, partly covered by tree branches. It seems likely this forge area was unroofed, or barely roofed.

At the end of the cell is what looks like the site of a fireplace. It seems to have two parts, divided by a shallow wall. It looks as though the right side had a roof, sloping upwards from the right, while the left side held the chimney. There's a flue hole leading from the right side, through the wall in the centre.

This right side is actually curved in shape at the back, the line straightening when it meets the side walls.

On the left is what seems to be the plastered remains of the chimney flue.

Looking through from the right to the left, this is the flue that connects the right side to the chimney.

Looking into the right side of the fireplace from the furthest right extent. The whole is mortared but no longer shows signs of soot.

The dividing wall between the two segments has bricks on the left side.

The apparent roof-line above the right side of the fireplace.

 

Looking along the floor of this apparent forge area, with the wide doorway in the foreground of the photo.

 

 

From the western side the apparent forge almost disappears against the more intact building beyond. Hopefully someone reading this may have a better idea of what this building was used for than me. I can construct a plausible case for it being a farrier associated with the large house, Tan y Bryn, just down the hill. That house at some point has become quite a large place, with considerable outbuildings, and possibly quite a few horses. The track leads straight up from Tan y Bryn to this building and to Llys y Gwynt, the gamekeeper's cottage. It doesn't seem unreasonable that the place might have had a farrier, or that the employer responsible for the gamekeeper had a farrier on the hill. Tan y Bryn is just over the road from Hen Efail - the 'Old Smithy.' The smith could have moved up the hill to here, or it could be a completely unrelated venture. Either way, shoeing horses would have been noisy and smelly, so having a farrier building well away from the posher buildings doesn't seem unreasonable. The gamekeeper's reaction to such a building so close to his home probably didn't factor in the decision.

 

This conjecture may be completely wrong. I would love to hear from someone who knows more about either this building or whether it's likely to be a farrier's.