Uwchmynydd

The Chapel at the Edge

On the cliffs above the sea at Trwyn Maen Melyn there is a rectangle of footings, forty feet by twenty-two, that used to be a chapel. Capel Mair, St Mary's Chapel, in ruins since the early eighteenth century. Pilgrims stopped here to ask the Virgin for safe passage before crossing to Bardsey, and local folklore holds that she rode across the sea and drank from the well below, leaving handprints and a horse's hoof-print on the rocks. This is roughly the shape of Uwchmynydd: a scatter of farms and cliffs and things that used to be something, at the very tip of the Llŷn.

There are no pubs here, no shop, no church. For any of that you drive the 1.8 miles to Aberdaron, five to seven minutes down minor lanes off the B4413. R. S. Thomas, who was vicar of Aberdaron from 1967 to 1978 and whose presence still saturates this whole end of the peninsula, called the village "scarcely a street, too few houses to merit the title." Uwchmynydd has fewer houses than that.

Headland and Wartime Remains

What it has is the headland. Four peaks rise above a rocky shore, the highest being Mynydd Mawr at 525 feet, and the National Trust car park up there is the base for most of what you'll do. A two-mile circular takes in the cliffs, the WWII coastguard lookout, and Bardsey across the sound. On a clear day the picnic site reaches Cardigan Bay, Bardsey Island, and the Wicklow Mountains of Ireland.

The road up Mynydd Mawr was built during the war so men could be posted at the top to give Liverpool early warning of air raids. A gun emplacement, a guardhouse, and radar joined the Victorian coastguard hut. All of it is gone now except the concrete bases at the foot of the hill.

Rare Life on the Cliffs

Braich y Pwll, the promontory at the tip, is the only recorded place on mainland Britain where the spotted rock rose grows — a small yellow flower with dark spots that blooms June to August and drops its petals within hours of opening. Choughs breed on the cliffs, peregrines hunt along them, and seals and dolphins work the water below. Across the sound, more than twenty thousand pairs of Manx shearwaters nest on Bardsey.

The Holy Well and Hermit's Cove

If you want to walk down to Ffynnon Fair, the holy well, it's a steep rough scramble from the grass car park and only safe at low tide. Joan Abbott Parry drowned trying to reach it in September 1904, swept from the rocks. The gentler option is the coastal path down to Porth Meudwy, the Hermit's Cove, once the pilgrims' embarkation point and now a place where a few men fish for lobster.

Aberdaron Tables

In Aberdaron, Gwesty Tŷ Newydd looks straight over the bay and serves Aberdaron lobster and crab, with a terrace worth a drink for the view. Y Gegin Fawr, now a café doing cream teas, was a thirteenth-century kitchen where pilgrims could claim a free meal before the crossing. They still feed people. The queue is shorter than it was.