New Precipice

Description

(D/A) From the George III facing the river, turn right to the road, then cross the Toll bridge over the Afon Mawddach, paying your fee at the booth on the left.
Follow the road beyond until you reach the A496 main road.

(1) Cross carefully, take a few steps to the left, then turn right into Taicynhaeaf. Follow the winding no-through road uphill for 200 yards between houses, then take a signposted footpath on the right. This path climbs to a path junction, where you turn right (ignoring a stile into a garden on your right). Continue to a former kissing gate and beyond through woodland, passing between rocky outcrops and through a gap in a dry-stone wall before descending alongside a fence and then a tumbledown wall.

(2) At a junction of paths with a yellow-topped waymark post, turn left and start to ascend again. Ignoring a white-arrowed waymark indicating an alternative route to the right, continue straight ahead to meet a forest road. Take the waymarked path opposite, which continues obliquely uphill through the trees. This path climbs to a dry-stone wall, where the path bears right.

Cross another footpath by a waymark post and take the path ahead, which leads on up to a metal hand-gate in a wall. Continue uphill to a wooden farm gate and then follow the field boundary towards a farm (Foel-Ispri-Uchaf). Bear left below the farm buildings to join the metalled track by the entrance gate.

(3) Turn right and pass in front of the farm buildings then take the footpath on the right before the farmhouse. Go through a couple of gates before emerging onto the open hillside. Follow the level and well-made New Precipice Walk path through another gate, with fabulous views down the estuary over your right shoulder. Continue along the contour past a series of benches then, beyond a wall, bear right downhill to a couple of ruined buildings, between which you cross a footbridge over a stream rushing steeply through the former gold mine.

(4) Pass the ruined house and follow the woodland edge beyond to a ladder-stile, where you cross the wall into the trees. Follow the obvious descending path to your left through the woodland to reach a crossroads of paths, where you carry straight on through the conifers, shortly emerging by the outlet of Llyn Tan-y-Graig.

(5) Walk round the end of the lake to a gate into open country; bear right then left, downhill, to a ladder-stile by a field gate. The path beyond descends steeply through deciduous woodland to a path alongside a stone wall; turn right and follow the wall downhill through a couple of gates to the road junction on the edge of the village of Llanelltyd.

(6) Turn left and walk along the quiet village street. Beyond an old bridge, keep straight on past a former chapel to the far end of the village.

(7) Cross the main road (A470) and take the no-through road opposite, continuing past a gate to reach the old bridge (Pont Llanelltyd) across the River Mawddach. Beyond the river, continue past a car park and the entrance to Cymer Abbey, bearing right at a road junction (ignoring the footpath ahead).

(8) On meeting the main road (A470), turn left along the combined pavement and cyclepath, passing a house on the right and the entrance to a kennels and cattery on the left. Cross the road carefully opposite a house called Talrafon.

(9) Bear right and left around the buildings to a bridge over a side-stream, beyond which turn left over a stile. The path leads to the riverbank and emerges on the Lon Mawddach Trail near the Bont y Wernddu car park. Turn right over the Afon Wnion and follow the Mawddach Trail through the estuarine meadows and marshes for a little over a mile, back to the Penmaenpool Toll Bridge and the George III. (D/A)