Garth Mountain

This was a walk that was partially abandoned earlier this year in low cloud, so with the recent spell of good weather a 'second attempt' was made to reach the summit trig point.

Another reason for completing the walk was football related. During 2010/11, the Martyrs spent a season in exile away from our spiritual home of Penydarren Park, during the games in the Western league I often used to gaze up at Garth Mountain and wonder what the Rhiw Dda'r ground looked like from the bluff, 1,000 feet above the extremely busy A470.



Well I was about to find out.

The early stage of the walk was exactly the same as the original, starting from the Lewis Arms car park. However, on this occasion I climbed the steep path that eventually led to the bluff, that is so prominently visible from the A470 as you approach the outskirts of Cardiff.



And there it was the ground were the Martyrs spent a year in exile climbing their way back through the non-league pyramid.



The all-round views are really spectacular. With Cardiff Bay to the South and Castell Coch just a few miles away, to Llantrisant in the west and Caerphilly Mountain in the north-east. After gazing at the two main communities situated directly beneath the mountain - Taff's Well and Gwaelodygarth, it was onwards to the trig point.



The circular route was completed when you leave the mountain to return through Pentyrch and back to the Lewis Arms.



The movie staring Hugh Grant, 'the Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain', is based on a story about the village of Taff's Well and the neighbouring Garth Hill.

Set in 1917 (with World War I as a backdrop), the film is based on two English cartographers. They arrive to measure the local "mountain" – only to cause outrage when they conclude that it is only a hill because it is slightly short of the required 1000 feet in height. The villagers, aided and abetted by the wily Morgan the Goat and the Reverend Mr Jones (who after initially opposing the scheme, grasps its symbolism in restoring the community's war-damaged self-esteem), conspire to delay the cartographers' departure while they build an earth cairn on top of the hill to make it high enough to be considered a mountain.