Hillfort at the Lonely Heart of Wales - Lampeter (Ceredigion)

We stopped the night in a coaching inn, built in 1700, in the traditional heart of Lampeter on the southern border of Ceredigion. The coaching inn, the Royal Black Lion Hotel in the High St. was an important halfway stop between Aberystwyth & Carmarthen where the horses were changed. The county court was also held there until 1820 when the Town Hall was built on the opposite side of 'The Street'

Lampeter was on the Roman route linking the garrison towns of Caernarvon & Carmarthen, so had been a bustling street for hundreds of years, The town was granted its earliest charter in 1284 but most of the buildings that exist now are Victorian.

Taking a detour through the grounds of the University of Wales, Lampeter (latterly known as St. David's College), we learnt it had been founded by Dr. Thomas Burgess to train Welsh youths for ministry. From 1803 to 1825 Dr. Burgess was Bishop of St. David's and later became Bishop of Salisbury. The site occupies what was previously a fortification to command this stretch of the Teifi valley. Lampeter Castle may well have started life as simple wooden tower with an outer ring of defences that was destroyed in the 12th century, but in 1403, the rebuilt fortress held out against Owain Glyndŵr.

Crossing a tributary of the River Teifi, a babbling brook, we headed up the hill to a farm. Passing trees that looked like giant feet with roots protruding horizontally, we made our way to Mount Pleasant Wood.

Home to numerous birds, it also contains a 300 acre mixed wood called Long Wood Community Woodland. Formed in 2002, the Community Group made up of local volunteers and paid staff are custodians of this natural reserve with over 9 miles of footpaths and bridleways. They aim to continue sustainable woodland management, creating new areas of broadleaf habitat, conserving the woodland for wildlife and increasing public awareness. In 2011, the group were able to buy the woodland from the Forestry Commission.

We followed the tree-lined track to the crest of the hill to almost 800ft above sea level. It was an old drovers track, believed to have been used since prehistoric times. Perched on the top of the hill, some 400ft above the floor of the Teifi valley is the iron age hill fort known as 'Castell Allt-goch'. It was thought that this ancient fortification was probably protected by two banks and ditches.

With the return part of the route stopped by a parade of just milked cows slipping and sliding their way back to the fields along a very muddy track we retraced our steps back down the Drover's Track.

Heading back though the town, we walked to Brondeift Church next to the site of an old railway bridge. Nearby was the bridge crossing the River Teifi. Its source, 20 miles upstream, is a 1898 acre bog and nature reserve; the bog was created from a lake formed after the Ice age.

Our final stop was St. Thomas's Square, all that is left of an area of common-land that the freemen of the borough jointly owned. One of the chapels on the square, Soar Chapel, was established in 1841, leased to the independents sect for one shilling a year. In 1874 the present chapel was built. A narrow street bought us out on the High St. next to the pub.