Pentre Ifan Wood

DISTANCE/DURATION: 2.1 miles (3.4 km) 1 hour.
PUBLIC TRANSPORT: None.
CHARACTER: Reasonably level, woodland, muddy in places.
LOOK OUT FOR: Felling of conifer trees to allow regeneration of broad leaved woodland.

There is plenty of evidence of human settlement throughout this landscape since prehistoric times, possibly as early as Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age times.

Just a few hundred yards above the wood stands one of Wales’ best-known ancient sites, the Neolithic or New Stone Age burial chamber of Pentre Ifan.

Today its giant capstone teeters on huge uprights but when it was built around 5,500 years ago the stones of the chamber would have been buried under a huge mound of earth.

It took thousands of years for the landscape of Wales to recover after the last Ice Age, around 11,500 years ago.

In time a seamless forest extended over most of uplands Wales, much of which was later cleared by human communities.

Parts of the wood the route passes through is a survivor of this ancient forest, with oaks that are hundreds of years old.

Look out for this ancient wood’s remarkable mix of plants. Old trees and the wood’s rocky outcrops are covered with close to 400 species of lichen alone.

Other parts of the wood were planted with conifers during the post-war years, but with some of the older deciduous trees left in place.

The old wood is now being regenerated by removal of the conifer.