Tre'r Ceiri

Tre'r Ceiri, "the town of the giants" in Welsh, clings to the eastern summit of Yr Eifl, the three-peaked hill that rises straight out of the sea on the north coast of the Llŷn Peninsula. Well over 400 metres up, it is one of the highest hillforts in Britain, and one of the most complete: its drystone rampart still stands to about four metres in places, with the old wall-walk and gateways easy to follow. Later generations, finding a walled town of stone on a windswept mountaintop, could only imagine that giants had built it, and the name stuck.

Inside the walls lie the footings of about 150 stone huts, round and later sub-rectangular, packed close together over the summit and linked by narrow lanes. Seen from the rampart or from the neighbouring peak of Garn Ganol, the pattern of rings and cells looks almost like a honeycomb, and it is this sense of a whole settlement frozen in plan, rather than a single wall, that makes the place so moving. The huts would once have had roofs of turf. The builders also left untouched a Bronze Age burial cairn on the highest point, incorporating it into their town rather than clearing it away.

The fort is thought to have been built around 200 BC, but most of the finds date from the 2nd to the 4th century AD, which shows that people went on living here throughout the Roman period. At its height it may have held a few hundred people. The historian John Davies suggested that, given the altitude, the huts may have been summer homes for shepherds who spent the winter in the lowlands. The antiquarian traveller Thomas Pennant described it in his Tours in Wales, and it has drawn walkers ever since; a detailed survey was carried out in 1956, and conservation work has since repaired both walls and paths.

On a clear day the view from the ramparts is one of the great ones of Wales: along the Llŷn coast, across Caernarfon Bay to Anglesey, and inland to the mountains of Snowdonia.

Getting there

The fort lies above the village of Llanaelhaearn on the northern Llŷn. Bangor is about 34 km away by straight line; the nearest large airport in Britain is Liverpool John Lennon Airport (LPL), about 113 km away (Isle of Man Airport, IOM, is closer as the crow flies but across the sea). A signed footpath climbs steeply from a lay-by on the B4417 just west of Llanaelhaearn; a longer route starts from the car park near the village of Llithfaen, roughly 1.5 miles each way. The climb is steep and the ground around Yr Eifl can be boggy, so walking boots are a good idea.