The Skirrid (Ysgyryd Fawr) Circular Walk in the Black Mountains, Abergavenny

Hike Profile

• Distance: 3m / 5km
• Duration: 2 – 2.5 hours
• Highest point: 1585ft / 480m
• Difficulty: Moderate (steep short climbs), sometimes loose terrain through the woods.
• Route conditions: Well-worn pathways most of the way around, good walking shoes are a must.

Hike Description & Pics

Let’s get going – If you need help organising this trip, see links below.

My ‘Bannau Brycheiniog Resource Kit‘ at the bottom of this page, will help you organise your travel, trips, food and accommodation when planning your visit to Wales, it’s all there to help you plan, give it a go.

This is a great walk to introduce yourself to the Black Mountains, and to the 3 in Abergavenny. The car park has plenty of spaces, and it is pretty much a straight up and down walk, so the chances of getting lost are pretty slim.

From the car park, head towards the Tourist Information board at the one end, to the left if you are looking at the car park facing into it from the entrance. There is a path that leads to a gap in the hedge, and once there turn right and walk to the top of the path.

At the end of this path is a set of wooden double gates, with a gate to the left side. Go through the gate and this is where you pretty much start heading up. There are a few paths that head off to the left and right, but for this hike, just keep straight.

This section of the hike is pretty steep, if you haven’t done much hill walking, then this will get you working, but it’s pretty short and you are soon rounding the corner at the top of this bit and back into open space.

About half way you will come to another gate and again just keep walking on up, the path in the summer is pretty decent, but in the winter after heavy rain this can be very slippery.

The walk is very straight forward from here, you will see the path ahead, and be aware that the first rise you see in the distance isn’t the peak, there is a bit further to walk, and the trig point is at the end.

You will now be able to take your time and take in the views, starting with the view across to the Sugar Loaf.

As I mentioned a little bit earlier about the first ridge being the false one, here is a pic so you can see. Once at the top on the left, you have the perfect sitting area on some rocks facing the Sugar Loaf and Abergavenny.

This is my favourite place to sit and watch the sunset, as it comes down behind the mountains of the Bannau Brycheiniog.

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Then it’s a nice walk onto the Trigg point, and the end point of this trail. You can continue the walk and go over the top and down the very steep back edge, but thats another route.

To return to the car, you head back exactly the way you came up, and you will be back at the car in no time. Here are a few pics so you can see how it looks on the way down, not forgetting to go through the middle gate about half way down, and then down to the double wooden gate before the path back to the car park.

That’s it, you’re all done, back at the car and hopefully the weather has been good, and you have had a great experience.

It is worth downloading this route onto your outdooractive app, it’ll re-assure you time wise and that you’re not heading in the wrong directions. There is so much space up there and lots of alternative paths you could accidently join.

Hope you enjoy this walk, and I’d love it if you could share this post either with the social media buttons that follow you down the screen on your left, or below in the footer. Also, comments are very welcome, I love meeting new people and talking and you never know we could meet up on one of our walks.

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