Sugar Loaf, sometimes called The Sugar Loaf ( cy, Mynydd Pen-y-fâl or ), is a hill situated north-west of

Abergavenny Abergavenny (; cy, Y Fenni , archaically ''Abergafenni'' meaning "mouth of the River Gavenny") is a market town and community in Monmouthshire, Wales. Abergavenny is promoted as a ''Gateway to Wales''; it is approximately from the border wi ...

Monmouthshire Monmouthshire ( cy, Sir Fynwy) is a county in the south-east of Wales. The name derives from the historic county of the same name; the modern county covers the eastern three-fifths of the historic county. The largest town is Abergavenny, with ...

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

and sits within the

Brecon Beacons National Park The Brecon Beacons National Park ( cy, Parc Cenedlaethol Bannau Brycheiniog) is one of three national parks in Wales, and is centred on the Brecon Beacons range of hills in southern Wales. It includes the Black Mountain (range), Black Mountain ...

. It is the southernmost of the summit peaks of the Black Mountains, with a height of 1,955 feet (596 metres). Sugar Loaf was gifted to the

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

by suffragette Lady Rhondda.

Name

The original Welsh name of the hill appears to have been Mynydd Pen-y-fâl. Translated into English, this name means 'mountain of the head/top of the peak/summit' from ''mynydd'', ''pen'' and ''bâl''. The name Sugar Loaf has been popularly applied to numerous hills which have a perceived resemblance to a

sugarloaf A sugarloaf was the usual form in which refined sugar was produced and sold until the late 19th century, when granulated and cube sugars were introduced. A tall cone with a rounded top was the end product of a process in which dark molasses, a ri ...

; the nearest other such hill is the

Sugar Loaf, Carmarthenshire Sugar Loaf, sometimes called The Sugar Loaf, is a prominent hill in Carmarthenshire, Wales beside the A483 trunk road some south-west of Llanwrtyd Wells. It is a popular viewpoint and picnic spot within easy reach on foot from the roadside car ...

Prehistory

A southern

foothill Foothills or piedmont are geographically defined as gradual increases in elevation at the base of a mountain range, higher hill range or an upland area. They are a transition zone between plains and low relief hills and the adjacent topograp ...

of Sugar Loaf, ''Y Graig'', was discovered in the 1990s to be the site of

prehistoric Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of ...

flint tools A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric (particularly Stone Ag ...

dating from the

Mesolithic The Mesolithic (Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used synonymous ...

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...

and

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...

Geology

It is a popular misconception that Sugar Loaf is an '

extinct volcano A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates are ...

'; an idea born perhaps from the striking resemblance of its conical outline, particularly when seen from the east, to that of a classic volcano. It is however composed entirely of

sedimentary rock Sedimentary rocks are types of rock that are formed by the accumulation or deposition of mineral or organic particles at Earth's surface, followed by cementation. Sedimentation is the collective name for processes that cause these particles ...

s. In common with the rest of the Black Mountains, the hill is formed from

Old Red Sandstone The Old Red Sandstone is an assemblage of rocks in the North Atlantic region largely of Devonian age. It extends in the east across Great Britain, Ireland and Norway, and in the west along the northeastern seaboard of North America. It also exte ...

which was laid down largely during the early part of the

Devonian The Devonian ( ) is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic era, spanning 60.3 million years from the end of the Silurian, million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Carboniferous, Mya. It is named after Devon, England, whe ...

Period. Its lower slopes (up to around are composed of

mudstone Mudstone, a type of mudrock, is a fine-grained sedimentary rock whose original constituents were clays or muds. Mudstone is distinguished from '' shale'' by its lack of fissility (parallel layering).Blatt, H., and R.J. Tracy, 1996, ''Petrology. ...

s and

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) ...

s assigned to the Senni Formation whilst its upper reaches are composed of the more sandstone-rich sequence known as the Brownstones Formation. The very summit of Sugar Loaf is formed from sandstones of the

Quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical form ...

Conglomerate Group which are of late Devonian age. There are a number of

landslip Landslides, also known as landslips, are several forms of mass wasting that may include a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, deep-seated slope failures, mudflows, and debris flows. Landslides occur in a variety of environments, ...

s on its flanks which are believed to date from early post-glacial times. The former Usk Valley

glacier A glacier (; ) is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its Ablation#Glaciology, ablation over many years, often Century, centuries. It acquires dis ...

divided to north and south of it as it travelled eastwards, though the mountain itself is largely free from

glacial till image:Geschiebemergel.JPG, Closeup of glacial till. Note that the larger grains (pebbles and gravel) in the till are completely surrounded by the matrix of finer material (silt and sand), and this characteristic, known as ''matrix support'', is d ...

Land use

The mountain is in the ownership of the

who manage its grazing by Welsh mountain sheep. The lower slopes are

deciduous In the fields of horticulture and Botany, the term ''deciduous'' () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, aft ...

mixed

woodland A woodland () is, in the broad sense, land covered with trees, or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood (or in the U.S., the ''plurale tantum'' woods), a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade (see ...

with

fern A fern (Polypodiopsida or Polypodiophyta ) is a member of a group of vascular plants (plants with xylem and phloem) that reproduce via spores and have neither seeds nor flowers. The polypodiophytes include all living pteridophytes except t ...

, heather and

bilberry Bilberries (), or sometimes European blueberries, are a primarily Eurasian species of low-growing shrubs in the genus ''Vaccinium'' (family Ericaceae), bearing edible, dark blue berries. The species most often referred to is ''Vaccinium myrtillus ...

, known locally as whinberry, on the upland slopes. The wooded slopes have been designated a

Site of Special Scientific Interest A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle of ...

. A

vineyard A vineyard (; also ) is a plantation of grape-bearing vines, grown mainly for winemaking, but also raisins, table grapes and non-alcoholic grape juice. The science, practice and study of vineyard production is known as viticulture. Vineyards ...

, producing Sugar Loaf

wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...

s, is situated at Dummar Farm at the foot of the mountain on south facing slopes near

Walking and view from the summit

The view from the summit covers the Black Mountains to the north,

the Cotswolds The Cotswolds (, ) is a region in central-southwest England, along a range of rolling hills that rise from the meadows of the upper River Thames, Thames to an escarpment above the Severn Valley and Evesham Vale. The area is defined by the be ...

to the east, as far as the Brecon Beacons including

Pen y Fan Pen y Fan () is the highest peak in South Wales, situated in the Brecon Beacons National Park. At above sea-level, it is also the highest British peak south of Cadair Idris in Snowdonia. It is the highest point (county top) of the historic cou ...

and

Corn Du Corn Du is a summit of the twin topped Pen y Fan and the second highest peak in South Wales at 873 m (2,864 ft), situated in the Brecon Beacons National Park. The summit itself is marked by a well structured Bronze Age cairn with a c ...

to the west and the

Bristol Channel The Bristol Channel ( cy, Môr Hafren, literal translation: "Severn Sea") is a major inlet in the island of Great Britain, separating South Wales from Devon and Somerset in South West England. It extends from the lower estuary of the River Seve ...

to the south. The

Skirrid Ysgyryd Fawr ( en, Skirrid) is an easterly outlier of the Black Mountains in Wales, and forms the easternmost part of the Brecon Beacons National Park. The hill is often referred to locally as just The Skirrid. The smaller hill of Ysgyryd Fa ...

is easily visible to the immediate east, including its spectacular

at its northern end. On a clear day it is possible to see hills as far north as Shropshire and as far south as Somerset. The Sugar Loaf is very popular with walkers and

hillwalking Walking is one of the most popular outdoor recreational activities in the United Kingdom, and within England and Wales there is a comprehensive network of rights of way that permits access to the countryside. Furthermore, access to much uncultiv ...

enthusiasts and offers easy ascents on foot from the Sugar Loaf car park, at about , or longer ascents from Abergavenny,

Crickhowell Crickhowell (; cy, Crucywel , non-standard spelling ') is a town and community in southeastern Powys, Wales, near Abergavenny, and is in the historic county of Brecknockshire. Location The town lies on the River Usk, on the southern edge ...

or Llangenny.Geograph photo
/ref>

References

External links

Photo showing how it gets its name

Photo from the Skirrid
{{coord, 51.86211, -3.05859, type:landmark_region:GB_source:enwiki-osgb36(SO272187), display=title Black Mountains, Wales Mountains and hills of Monmouthshire Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Monmouthshire Landmarks in Wales Marilyns of Wales