
- Height
- 623.5 m · 2,046 ft
- Prominence
- 29 m
- Grid reference
- SH 72190 68883
- Coordinates
- 53.20160, -3.91495
- County / area
- Conwy
- Region
- Snowdonia
- OS Landranger
- 115
- OS Explorer
- OL17E
- Summit feature
- boulder
- Key col
- SH 71943 69030 (594.5 m)
About Pen y Castell
Pen y Castell tops the east ridge of Drum, in the Carneddau. The summit is a scatter of rocky outcrops set in a small boggy plateau at 623 m.
The outlook takes in the higher Carneddau ridge westward, Craig Eigiau to the south, Tal y Fan northwards and the Conwy valley to the east. It is listed as a Nuttall.
Background written from facts in the Wikipedia article on Pen y Castell (CC BY-SA 4.0). Heights, prominence and grid references come from the Database of British & Irish Hills, not from Wikipedia.
Access rights here
Conditional Right to roam: Right to roam only on mapped CRoW open access land.
Permission needed Wild camping: Permission needed everywhere.
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
- —
- Sunset
- —
- Daylight
- —
- Civil twilight ends
- —
Computed astronomically for 53.202, -3.915. Plan your finish with the daylight safety planner.
Summit weather live
Loading forecast for the summit (624 m)…
Forecast adjusted to summit altitude. Weather data from MET Norway (CC BY 4.0).
Finding the summit
boulder is 0.46m higher than outcrop 60m SW at SH 72222 68925 and 2.43m higher than rock tor 230m ESE at SH 72437 68877.
The recorded summit point is boulder. That distinction matters on broad or flat tops, where the obvious cairn is not always the true high point.
- Survey method
- Leica NA730/Leica RX1250
- Record revised
- 13-Dec-17
- Drop measured from
- SH 71943 69030 · 594.5 m
Classification history: The Nuttalls give the summit as the rock tor at SH724688. Drop 29.0m by line survey..
Survey notes are field observations recorded in the Database of British & Irish Hills (v18.3, CC BY 4.0) by the hill-surveying community.
Which hill this one belongs to
Pen y Castell is not counted as an independent hill in its own right. In prominence terms it belongs to Carnedd Llewelyn (1,064 m) — the nearest Marilyn you can reach from this summit without first dropping below its key col, 595 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
| Peak | Height | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| Drum | 771 m | 1.5 km |
| Foel-fras | 944.1 m | 2.7 km |
| Llwytmor | 849 m | 3.2 km |
| Craig Eigiau | 735 m | 3.6 km |
| Tal y Fan | 610 m | 3.8 km |
| Garnedd Uchaf | 925 m | 4 km |