Fan Frynych

About Fan Frynych

Fan Frynych, at 629 m in the Bannau Brycheiniog, shares a national nature reserve with its neighbour Craig Cerrig-gleisiad. The reserve covers around 156 acres and takes in both summits; its name refers to the cliff of salmon-coloured rocks, a glacial cirque whose moraine and steep crags shelter ground that sheep cannot reach.

That inaccessibility has preserved Arctic-alpine plants including purple saxifrage and roseroot, alongside mixed woodland with orchids and anemones, and scattered scrub and hawthorn lower down. Peregrine falcons, ring ouzels and ravens are recorded here, along with sixteen butterfly species.

The reserve lies within Fforest Fawr, land set aside for hunting in Norman times that stayed in Crown hands into the nineteenth century. Natural Resources Wales now administers it.

Background written from facts in the Wikipedia article on Craig Cerrig-gleisiad and Fan Frynych National Nature Reserve (CC BY-SA 4.0). Heights, prominence and grid references come from the Database of British & Irish Hills, not from Wikipedia.

Access rights here

General position for Wales — local byelaws, seasonal restrictions and closures can override it. Full details: access rights in Wales · check another location.

Daylight at this summit today

Sunrise

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Sunset

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Daylight

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Civil twilight ends

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Computed astronomically for 51.894, -3.516. Plan your finish with the daylight safety planner.

Finding the summit

The recorded summit point is ground by elevated trig point. On broad or flat summits the obvious cairn is not always the true high point.

Survey method

obvious summit

Record revised

24-Dec-20

Drop measured from

SN 9596 2211 · 582.2 m

Survey notes are field observations recorded in the Database of British & Irish Hills (v18.3, CC BY 4.0) by the hill-surveying community.

Long-distance paths past this hill

2 waymarked long-distance routes run within 2.5 km of the summit — useful if you are linking this hill into a longer walk, or want a made path for the approach.

Route lines © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL); distance from the summit computed by OpenFell.

Which hill this one belongs to

Fan Frynych is not counted as an independent hill in its own right. In prominence terms it belongs to Fan Fawr (734 m) — the nearest Marilyn you can reach from this summit without first dropping below its key col, 582 m.

Grouping is by prominence alone: a summit belongs to the nearest higher Marilyn it connects to without a deeper intervening col. Over a large massif that can gather hills no one would walk in a single day, and which few would describe as parts of the same mountain — it is a measure of independence, not a suggested route.

Nearest listed peaks