Pen y Garn

About Pen y Garn

Pen y Garn, whose name means head of the cairn, tops a plateau of 500 to 600 m in the Cambrian Mountains of mid Wales. The Cefn Croes wind farm occupies part of that plateau and its turbines stand very close to the summit.

The high point has a trig point and a very large shelter cairn hollowed out of what remains of an ancient burial cairn. Some 10 km north the whole Plynlimon range is visible, taking in Y Garn, Pen Pumlumon Fawr, Pen Pumlumon Llygad-bychan and Pen Pumlumon Arwystli; Aberystwyth lies 21 km west and Drygarn Fawr 20 km to the south-south-east.

Background written from facts in the Wikipedia article on Pen y Garn (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 52.379, -3.767. Plan your finish with the daylight safety planner.

Finding the summit

The recorded summit point is no feature: ground by gate. That distinction matters on broad or flat tops, where the obvious cairn is not always the true high point.

Survey method

Abney level/Trimble GeoXH 6000

Record revised

19-Oct-14

Drop measured from

SN796839 · 417 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.

Get food nearby

3 places to eat or drink within 10 km of the summit, rated under the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (Scotland runs its own Food Hygiene Information Scheme, a pass/fail equivalent).

Classifications and ratings are the local authority's own and can be coarse — this is a lead, not a guarantee of opening hours or that food is served to non-residents. Follow a name through to the official rating page to check, and confirm before you rely on it.

Food hygiene data from the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland (Open Government Licence v3.0). Distances and directions computed by OpenFell from the summit.

The Pen y Garn group

15 other listed summits sit in the same prominence group, with Pen y Garn as the independent hill at its head.

Twelve highest shown, of 15 in the group.

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