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Tre Wallter Llwyd

Burial Chamber

<b>Tre Wallter Llwyd</b>Posted by KammerImage © Simon Marshall
Also known as:
  • Trewallter

Nearest Town:Fishguard (11km NE)
OS Ref (GB):   SM868317 / Sheet: 157
Latitude:51° 56' 32.6" N
Longitude:   5° 6' 8.16" W

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<b>Tre Wallter Llwyd</b>Posted by Kammer <b>Tre Wallter Llwyd</b>Posted by Kammer <b>Tre Wallter Llwyd</b>Posted by Kammer <b>Tre Wallter Llwyd</b>Posted by Kammer <b>Tre Wallter Llwyd</b>Posted by Kammer

Fieldnotes

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Visited 14th April 2003: There's a public footpath to Tre Wallter Llwyd, but don't be surprised if you have trouble following it. Approaching from the A487, there's a track leading north to Tre Wallter Farm which is easy enough to find. You need to follow this track to the farm, then pass to the east of the farm house so that you're continuing between it and the dilapidated corrugated iron barn (you can't miss it, it groans in the wind).

Just past the barn is where things get tricky, because the footpath isn't marked. It should branch off to the east between two hedge banks, but the nice farmer has fenced it off with barbed wire. Even if the barbed wire wasn't there, you'd be hard pressed to walk between the hedge banks because they're so overgrown. When we reached this point I went and knocked on the door of the farmhouse to find out how we were expected to get to the burial chamber, but sadly there was nobody in.

We decided to keep going, travelling along a parallel route to the footpath in the field to the south of it. This involved carefully moving a single strand of temporary electric fence, then re-erecting it once we were over it (not easy with a baby on your back). We passed through this field until we reached the end of the overgrown part of the public footpath, and guess what, the nice farmer had put another barbed wire fence across this end of the path! Luckily we had already deviated from it, otherwise we'd have been mightily pissed off.

From here we got a glimpse of the burial chamber in the hedge bank to the south east, on the opposite side of the field. When we got close up, we found that the chamber has been fenced of with stock fencing, as if it was just an inconvenient bump in the hedge bank. The fencing looked quite new, and it was pressed right up against the chamber to minimise the amount of grazing that the land owner would loose. It would be impossible to ram a fence post into the ground, as it rested against the stone, without doing some damage. Anything sensitive under the soil would have been skewered by the fence posts.

The chamber should be a delight to visit. It looks out towards the coast, and you can just make out Carreg Samson to the north west. It's one of those sites where you wonder why they put it there, right up until you're standing next to it. Then it hits you just how amazing it is.

Despite the setting, I was quietly seething by the end of our visit, and I've since contacted Pembrokeshire County Council and Cadw about the footpath and the fencing. If I get anything back from them, I'll post it up.
Kammer Posted by Kammer
1st May 2003ce
Edited 27th October 2003ce