A map of this walk can be found here 

Start in Trelawnyd from the High Street Car Park. Turn right up the High Street and follow the road up the hill and out of the village. The last house but one in the village, on your left, is the former Wesleyan Chapel (See Walk 3).

 

Carry on a short distance until you come to a kissing gate on your left, MT1 go through this gate.

 

Follow the arrow up the hill to another kissing gate, MT2, in the stone wall in front of you. The wall marks the boundary between the parishes of Trelawnyd and Gwaenysgor.

 

Go through the gate. Gop wood is on your left. For the main trail to Gwaenysgor follow the direction of the arrow down the hill, alongside the wall between the field and Gop Wood. (Ignore the permissive footpath to Gop Cairn on the top of Gop Hill which starts here, on the other side of a kissing gate). On this section of the Trail you have a magnificent view to the north of fine Elizabethan manor house of Golden Grove and its gardens on the other side of the valley below you.

 

DOMESDAY BOOK

 

There is evidence of settlement here going back to Neolithic times. The house was mentioned in the Doomsday book as Ulvesgrave, which it has been suggested may have meant ‘Wolves Grove’. The present house dates from 1578. From sixteenth to the nineteenth century Golden Grove belonged to the Morgan family.

 

About three hundred yards down the hill, where the wood comes to an end, you will find the next kissing gate, MT3, let into the stone wall on your left.

 

Go through this gate and down a steep bank into the next field. On the horizon ahead of you is the village of Gwaenysgor.

 

The Trail runs north westwards, alongside Gop Wood for about 50 yards and then turns into the wood itself through a kissing gate, MT4, let into the hedge next to a farm gate.

 

Inside the wood follow the track from the gate to the right for a short distance and then to the left for about thirty yards up the hill side. At this point, following the direction arrows, turn right off the path leading up the hill, into another track or ‘ride’ which leads down the hillside some four hundred yards or so to the next kissing gate, MT5. Pass through this gate.

 

GOP WOOD

 

Today Gop Wood belongs to the Golden Grove estate. Until 1804, when the commons and wastes of the parish were enclosed, the whole area was part of the commons of Gwaenysgor where commoners could graze their stock and collect fuel. It is unlikely that there would have been many trees there at this time.