Two Rivers, Ruthin

Start: The Ruthin Castle Hotel, Castle Street, Ruthin, North Wales LL15 2NU Tel: 01824 702664

(S/E) Walk down the drive from the Ruthin Castle Hotel, and out through the gateway. Turn immediately left through the smaller arch (Cwningar y Castell/ Cunning Green). Follow the walled alleyway, bearing left under an arch after a triangular green space. Follow the castle wall to the end of this path, then turn right along a narrow lane between houses. Turn left past the Old Mill building and bear right, out to the main road.

(1) Turn left and cross the car park into Cae Ddôl park. Bear right and cross the second footbridge over the River Clwyd. Walk to the left of the lake ahead and continue across the park, exiting between the rugby pitch and clubhouse. Turn right to the main road and cross at the island. Take a couple of steps right then turn left into a walled alleyway, which emerges into modern housing.

(2) Follow the road ahead for 330 m then turn left by a children’s playground and go through a gate into a field. Ignoring the obvious path ahead, turn right through another gate and follow the field-edge with the playground and then houses on your right. Bear slightly left to a gate, to the left of some red-brick houses facing you, and follow a narrow and potentially overgrown path behind the gardens and past the end of a cul-de-sac.

(3) At the end, a kissing gate leads into fields. Cross to another gate then follow the right-hand field edge uphill. In the top corner, go through a gate on the right and turn left along the top of the field, with fine views over Ruthin to Moel Famau and the rest of the Clwydian ridge. Three fields later, pass through another gate into a farm lane.

(4) Don’t follow the lane, but take a footpath over a footbridge to a gate in the hedge opposite. Follow the left-hand field edge ahead, passing the old farmhouse at Ty’n-y-caeau. At the end of the field, bear left of the field gate through a hand gate and along a narrow, hedged path and into another field. Continue along the top of the field as before. In the second field, switch to the other side of the hedge via a kissing gate on the left and follow the field edge down to another gate into a narrow lane. Turn left then immediately right into a descending track.

(5) Keep left past a house and then go through a gate into a track that winds left then right down to the valley bottom. Go through a gate behind a house then bear left over a footbridge over the Afon Clywedog. On the other side, turn right past another house and continue along the track down the wooded valley with the
river on your right. After half a mile the track leaves the woods, becomes metalled and passes a house (Glan Clywedog) on the left.

(6) At Rhyd-y-Cilgwyn farm, turn right over the old bridge and out to the main road. Cross carefully and follow the road signposted to Llanynys opposite (ignoring the turning on the immediate left). At a T-junction to the right of a chapel, turn right and follow the road through mostly modern housing.

(7) At the next T-junction, turn left past the tennis courts and playing fields on the left. Continue past the delimit signs and the entrance to the Sugar Plum Tearoom on the left. Pass a turning on the right and continue along the road for a further 300 metres. Bear right at a junction (following the sign for Gelfor), then keep right again at the next junction among a cluster of cottages. After 200 metres you reach a bridge over the River Clwyd.

(8) Turn right onto the riverside footpath. At the end of the second field, ignore a footbridge and continue through the kissing gate ahead, still on the right-hand bank. After two fields the path crosses a footbridge over a side-stream and continues along the main river through two further fields (potentially under crops), leaving the Clwyd briefly to a kissing gate into pasture. Beyond the next kissing gate the path runs between the river and a water treatment works to a weir and bridge.

(9) Continue alongside the river beyond the service road before returning to pastureland. After a kissing gate, pass under a road bridge and continue through more meadows. At the end, cross the river via a footbridge and cross a small field to the road by the entrance to a builders’ merchant’s yard.

(10) Cross and follow Hafan Clwyd opposite, bearing right and uphill at a junction. This road runs below the churchyard and emerges in the main square in Ruthin. Pass to the right of the Old Court House into Stryd y Castell/Castle Street and walk past Nantclwyd y Dre back to the castle gatehouse. Follow the driveway through the arch and back to the Ruthin Castle Hotel. (S/E)

Start: The Ruthin Castle Hotel, Castle Street, Ruthin, North Wales LL15 2NU Tel: 01824 702664

Notes: Field and riverside paths may be overgrown or muddy in places.

Find more information on Walks From the Door website here.

• Moel Famau is the highest point of the Clwydian Hills and lies on the route of the Offa’s Dyke path. The Jubilee Tower on the summit was built to celebrate the golden jubilee of George III, though it was never completed.

• The Afon Clwyd rises in Clocaenog Forest and runs for 35 miles to the sea at Rhyl. Sand Martins nest in the banks below Ruthin.

• Stonechats are common in the Clwydian Hills and have a sharp call that sounds like two stones being tapped together.

• Nantclwyd y Dre in Castle Street dates from 1435.

• The beautiful, wooded valley of the Afon Clywedog is followed by a track known as Lady Bagot’s Drive. The Bagots were local landowners, and Rhyd-y-cilgwyn was part of their estate.