The climate was milder than it is today, when Tre’r Ceiri was occupied and
certainly less prone to the storms we now have. Yet still, when the clouds
majestically roll down off Yr Eifl, you wonder what it must have been like to
live up here. Atmospheric at the very least. But cosy too, in these densely
packed huts, where wood or peat fires burned. The foundations of a
significant colony of 150 round and oblong homes are still discernible.
Stones everywhere you look. Ramparts and hut foundations emerging from
heaps of collapsed structures scattered on rocks and outcrops. A whole
summit of stones, as if the mountain has exploded to expose its shattered
bones.
Tre’r Ceiri is one of the best preserved Iron Age defended hillforts in
Britain. Its round (and oblong) houses were enclosed by a formidable four-
metre high rampart. Visitors were presumably channelled through two
major gateways, while residents used three less imposing entrances; one
which was for fetching water from the spring.
Tre’r Ceiri was constructed in the latter part of the Iron Age, as the climate
improved after a few cold wet centuries had forced people from summits to
slopes. And it remained inhabited during the Roman occupation, despite
being a stone’s throw from Caernarfon, where the Roman fort of Segontium
was built. Occupation ceased in the fourth century as the climate
deteriorated once more (and the Romans too, withdrew to Europe).
The view from here is spectacular! Iced light kaleidoscopes around the
valley, spotlighting bright white Llanaelhaearn in a bed of green hills. The
sky is alive; swift clouds, purple, white, black and grey are shifting at pace
over purple crags and red bracken slopes, while Eryri is a theatre of rock.
Meanwhile at my feet, radiant moss cushions the stones and frogspawn has
been delivered onto a wet tussock – I transfer it into a nearby pool.
VII