Built around 1760 this wall is 7 miles long and encloses the land on the lower slopes of the mountain (Glyder Fach). It was built in an attempt to improve the value of Dyffryn, the hill farm I have been writing about recently.
It is quite beautifully made with a skill and craftsmanship, not to mention strength and endurance, that boggles the mind of this 21st century pen pusher. It has merged into the landscape so much so that it now looks like a natural part of the mountain, and when examined up close you can see how the slow growing, hardy, slightly weird organisms we call lichens have colonised the stones and have made the wall their habitat for (hopefully) centuries to come.
Here you can see it snaking away up and across the mountain and get a sense of the scale of the job those wallers from centuries past undertook.
Mike Howe 
Thank you so much for all your information on Dyffryn Mymbyr. Today I realised my ambition and visited the Farmhouse after reading “ I bought a mountain” many years ago.
Now I have to go back one day and walk those mountains!
I’m glad you made it to the farmhouse. Having read the book it’s quite an emotional experience isn’t it? The wall up the mountain won’t disappoint either!
When the email arrived to say you had a new post I mis-read the title; I thought it said “My favourite walK”. Actually I suppose taking those wonderful pictures, you must have walked alongside the wall. Do you know if it has a beginning & an end & how long it might be? I live not too far from the Mourne Wall which I think is about 22 miles long. Great post Mike; it’s started me thinking about walking in the mountains again. There’s an annual challenge to walk it in a day! Not for the faint-hearted!
Yes it runs the length of the farm, 7 miles, it was put there to seperate the high mountain from the lower land and it was a really lovely walk to get to it
I’d love to have a wall like that instead of a wire fence.
Haha you could always learn the craft if you had enough stone lying around
In my old place I had enough stones lying around, but now I live on a very sandy place.
Ok love old stone walls. I saw a beautiful one in Mexico once, but there was nowhere to stop and take a photo on the narrow twisty road, so it lives only in my memory.
They do have a certain magic
Wow, what a structure!
Yes Terry it certainly is, when you get up close and give it a hefty shove it doesn’t move a millimeter, amazing craftsmanship to build it all those centuries ago
You have excellent taste in walls. 🙂 That is certainly a beautiful one. And I’ve loved lichens since I was a kid. Wish we had some stone walls, but you don’t find a lot of rock in the plains states.
Yes but you have beautiful wide open landscapes with big skies and much more, I get excited just thinking about it
Nebraska would be nice. Plains to the east and mountains to the west. And on the other side of the mountains the desert starts. But if you wanted ocean you’d have to go a little farther. 😉