Carn Fran summit

 

Many years ago (about 63, to be more precise) Francis Synge pointed out to me that the rhyolite hills between Fishguard and Dinas were rather interesting.  He pointed out how smooth and rounded they were, in contrast to the craggy uplant tors found at higher altitudes on Mynydd Dinas, Carningli and Mynydd Preseli.  The main summits are Carn Fran and Carn Gelli, and there are half a dozen minor summits as well.  They are all "clean" and relatively smooth, and a number of geomorphologists in the past have suggested that they were glaciated quite recently while the other higher summits were above the upper glaciation limit.  

Nowadays it is accepted that that interpretation is rather simplistic, and that changes of landscape characteristics may be related to changes in glacier bed conditions.  Thin ice on rounded upland terrain may have been frozen to its bed -- ant therefore incapable of intensive erosion -- while thicker ice in the lowlands may have been above the pressure melting point, flowing faster and with greater erosive capacity........

In the past I have never managed to get up onto the summits of these hills because of thick vegetation -- gorse, brambles, heather and bracken.  But in recent years a "permissive path" has been opened, and this gives easy access to Carn Fran.  We have been doing some work up there -- more of which in due course......