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The Presely Hills stretch from Foel Eryr eastward to Y Frenni Fawr. though none exceeds the height of Foel Cwm Cerwyn (1760ft/536m), they form a dominant feature of the landscape. From Foel Eryr on a clear day you may see Snowdon and Dunkery Beacon and, on a very clear day, the hills of Wicklow.

They are the remnants of a vast Caledonian mountain range worn down to give smooth, rounded contours that are crowned, here and there, by clusters of rocky crags, as at Cerrig Lladron, Cerrig Marchogion, Carn Bica, Carn Awl and Carn Meini. Igneous rocks are exposed in narrow strips aligned in the ENE-WSW trend of the Caledonian orogeny.

The coarse-grained spotted dolerite and the rhyolite and volcanic ash that intrude around Carn Meini found their way to Stonehenge, either carried by ice, as some say, or borne by the hand of man. We know how men could have done it, but why, unless they were of some special significance? A Stone Age sailor in his fragile craft on the western sea would first see the welcome sign of land in the form of the Presely summits, and they may have acquired a veneration, even a sanctity as the holy hills where the gods preside.

The hills are clothed in heather and gorse, purple and gold, in spring and summer, and in autumn the bracken gives them a russet coat. On a misty morning they soften into a harebell blue. 

Mountain sheep keep the grass short all the year, except when they are collected for the stra, for shearing and ear marking. Mountain ponies roam the bills, their proud nostrils a reminder of their Arab ancestry. Farmsteads and holdings creep up the slopes as far as they can. My grandfather was born at Hendre, traditionally the winter dwelling in the time of transhumance, above which, on the breast of the hill, stands Hafod, the summer dwelling.

Men have lived here a long time.Those who deserved to be remembered were laid in burial chambers of which none is greater than Pentre Ifan, and none more mysterious than Bedd yr Afanc. Bronze Age men followed the ridgeway, their trade route to Ireland, and brought back Wicklow gold; barrows and cairns along the way commemorate those who fell by the wayside. Three such cairns erected on the summit of Foel Drygarn were later surrounded by an Iron Age hill fort. The fortified settlement at Carn Alw was protected by a chevaux-de-frise through which an avenue of small stones led to the dwelling. Carn lngli, separated from the rest of the Presely by the meltwater channel that formed the Gwaun Valley, has great stone ramparts erected between the tors, and enclosures and hut circles and enclosed terraces that provided refuge for a cattle-raising community.

In the primitive, and probably oldest, of Welsh tales, Culhwch ac Olwen, Arthur came in chase of the ferocious wild boar, Twrch Trwyth, after it had ravaged Ireland and crossed the sea to Porth Clais, and 'made off thence to Preselau'. At Cwm Cerwyn it stood at bay and slew four of Arthur's champions, and four more before it was wounded and slunk away. Arthur is remembered in the hills at Carn Arthur and Bedd Arthur, and his knights at Cerrig Marchogion.

In the Mabinogion it would appear that Preselau was a place, rather than a range of hills, but its location has not been found. The name derives from prysg Selau (or Selyf), meaning Solomon's wood, and it always enjoyed the alternative spelling of Preselau or Presely, until an ignorant local authority thought it should be 'Preseli', a meaningless form that continues to be used by those who do not know better.

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