Immediately to the front of you the wooded slopes of the National Trust estate 'Plas yn Rhiw' eventually prevent too much of a forward view but walking through the trees was very pleasant and as I gained height the view over Hell's Mouth became more dramatic. Plas yn Rhiw is an early 17th C manor house, the building and the gardens restored by the three Keating sisters in the 1930's. The history of the local area is more ancient, going back some four thousand years with numerous Neolithic sites in the immediate area including burial chambers and hut circles, Irona Age forts and long cairns.
The land around Mynydd Penarfynydd is also owned by the National Trust. It consists mainly of rare heathland in which heathers, gorse and fern predominate, with here and there little and not-so-little patches of wild flowers, including tall, brighly coloured lupins. As well as the heathland there is extensive grassland and, slightly further inland, arable land, that all together offer a rich diversity of habitats. Penarfynydd is home to a couple of pairs of breeding Choughs and, although I could hear their distictive call and could see them at a distance, I was not successful in gettiing close to them.
Coming off the headland the route drops down the back of the hill, heading inland to go round a water feature and gully at Nant y Gadwen. From the bottom of the hill you go through the farm steading at Penarfynydd and on to a small secondary road. There follows a very short road walk to a Y-junction where the road on the left will take you to the early medieval church of St Maelrhys in llanfaelrhys. The Saint thought to have hailed from Brittany. The church looks out over Porth Ysgo. To the right at the junction the road continues on up the hill heading inland.
The path at this juncture leaves the road in the dip of the Y, dropping down in to a gully, Nant y Gadwen, that runs back down to the coast. There was extensive manganese mining carried out at one time in this area, with a slipway at Porth Ysgo that was used for loading the manganese. Nant y Gadwen was just one of a small group of manganese mines near the village of Rhiw. A tramway on the hilltop led to a wheelhouse from where the manganese was lowered to the shore to be loaded on to boats. On the hillside somewhere, there are the remains of the wheelhouse but in the poor weather I did not go looking for it. Rather head down and hood up, I just continued to make the miles.
Coming up out of the gully just above the shore I had a flock of sheep in front of me for a mile or two as we both shared the path. Because the path was so narrow, there was no way the sheep could double back and I worried that I was driving them far from their usual habitat. However, they did not seem at all put out and when the path broadened they happily grazed away.