Garn Fawr

The builders of Iron Age forts usually chose good vantage points. At Garn Fawr they picked a hill that now commands a breathtaking view of the coast, the lighthouse at Strumble Head and of the flat-topped Pen Caer peninsula to the north and east.

The people who constructed the fort more than 2,500 years ago made good use of the hill’s natural lines, linking its rocky outcrops with walls to form good defences. Over the years some stones have been moved or taken, but it is still possible to make out much of the layout of its ramparts. The hill also has a World War One lookout point.

The viewpoint commands a landscape that was created by dramatic geological events more than 440 million years ago. Then volcanoes were active in the area, pushing out lava flows that cooled to form very hard igneous rocks. In some places the molten rock did not reach the surface but cooled slowly below the ground. These igneous intrusions have resisted erosion better than surrounding layers to become rocky crags.