5 SPOOKY HIKES IN SOUTH WALES FOR HALLOWEEN
When the last light fades across the Welsh hills and the valleys are cloaked in mist, South Wales transforms into a landscape made for ghosts. From crumbling ruins to haunted hills, this region is full of spooky hikes that blend eerie legends with breathtaking scenery.
Halloween is when South Wales feels at its most otherworldly. If you dare, leave behind the comfort of your fireside and walk these trails where folklore and history intertwine. Each step will take you deeper into places where the veil feels thinner, the silence heavier, and the imagination impossible to contain…
Devil’s Pulpit – A Haunted Hike Above Tintern Abbey
Distance: 10km
Elevation: 428m Devil’s Pulpit Route
Perched high above the Wye Valley, the Devil’s Pulpit is a jagged limestone outcrop with a chilling legend. From here, you can look down on the ruins of Tintern Abbey, a place of beauty by day but said to feel unsettling in the half-light.
According to folklore, it was from this very pulpit that the Devil himself would stand and preach to the monks below, tempting them to abandon their faith. Whether you believe the tale or not, there’s no denying the spot has an eerie atmosphere, especially when mist hangs low over the valley and the abbey’s skeletal walls glow pale against the dark trees.
The hike follows part of the Offa’s Dyke Path, weaving through ancient woodland before the sudden reveal of the pulpit and its breathtaking, if somewhat sinister, view. On a quiet evening, when the only sound is the rustle of leaves and the rush of the river far below, it’s not hard to imagine shadows moving at the edge of your vision.
A place of legends, whispers and sweeping views, the Devil’s Pulpit is both beautiful and unsettling – the perfect start to a spooky South Wales hike.
Cribarth & Craig y Nos Castle – A Ghostly Walk in the Swansea Valley
Distance: 7km
Elevation: 323m Cribarth Route
Few walks begin and end in a place as famously haunted as Craig y Nos Castle. Once home to the opera star Adelina Patti, the castle’s grand halls have a darker side, with countless tales of ghostly apparitions, unexplained footsteps, and eerie voices echoing through the night. Guests still report strange occurrences – from pianos playing by themselves to figures glimpsed in mirrors. Stepping out from its looming shadow, you carry those stories with you into the hills.
The walk to Cribarth, known locally as the “Sleeping Giant,” takes you across scarred limestone ridges and quarries that hint at an industrial past now reclaimed by nature. The ground here is uneven and dramatic, littered with strange rock formations that add to the otherworldly atmosphere. On a misty day, the ridge can feel especially haunting, with shapes shifting in the fog and the valley below disappearing into shadow.
Legend says the giant still lies beneath the mountain, his outline forming the skyline above the Tawe Valley. As you trace the path across his sleeping form, it’s easy to feel a shiver that has nothing to do with the wind.
Returning to Craig y Nos Castle as dusk falls, with its reputation as one of the most haunted places in Wales, the walk ends just as spookily as it began.
Mynydd Meio – Haunted Hills of Caerphilly
Distance: 15km
Elevation: 472m Mynydd Meio Route
Rising above the valleys near Caerphilly, Mynydd Meio is steeped in one of South Wales’ oldest and eeriest legends. The hill is said to be haunted by Sini, a spirit whose presence has lingered for thousands of years. She is no ordinary banshee: Sini is known to appear in many guises – an old woman begging for help, a lost child, or a beautiful young woman who lures men to their doom with promises she never intends to keep.
The most chilling part of the tale tells of Sini at the mountain streams, endlessly washing the severed heads of those she has claimed. Local folklore warns that she is especially drawn to those of “mixed blood,” part human and part demon, marking them for her deadly attention.
The hike itself is a long circular across open moorland, where quiet streams cut through the hillside and sudden drops reveal sweeping views of the valleys below. On a misty day, the hill feels heavy with silence, the kind that makes you glance over your shoulder more than once. The sound of water running through the fords becomes uncanny when you remember the story and on certain dusky evenings, it’s easy to believe the banshee still lingers there.
A place of open skies and old curses, Mynydd Meio is a walk where the boundary between legend and landscape feels paper thin.
Clydach Gorge – Fairies, Witches and the Devil’s Face
Distance: 5km (each way)
Elevation: 270m Clydach Gorge Route
The Clydach Gorge is a place where the natural and the supernatural have always intertwined. Carved by the river and later scarred by industry, its steep slopes are rich with folklore: fairies, witches, goblins and spirits all said to linger in its depths.
One of the gorge’s most curious landmarks is its Devil’s Bridge. Beneath the crossing, the rocks form into the uncanny shape of the Devil’s face. Nearby lies Cwm Pwca, a hollow where the mischievous goblin Pwca was once believed to dwell. A trickster and shapeshifter, Pwca could appear as a rabbit, goat, cat or a terrifying black hound with glowing eyes, often seen as a portent of death. To walk the gorge at dusk, with shadows lengthening and sounds carrying strangely through the trees, is to understand why people feared his presence.
The gorge has also been linked to witches who gathered in secret, blighting crops and cursing livestock, and to lingering ghosts from its industrial past. The most unsettling is the tale of John Dawson, the ironworks tyrannical schoolteacher who mysteriously vanished, his drowned pets found tied in a sack. His ghost is said to wander the quarry paths still.
Perhaps most evocatively, the gorge is said to have inspired Shakespeare himself. Local tradition claims he drew on the fairy folklore of this valley when writing A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Step into the gorge on a misty evening, and you can almost imagine Oberon’s court among the branches, or Puck slipping just out of sight.
Today, the walk leads past moss-clad ruins, tramroads and waterfalls, each turn heavy with echoes of the past. In autumn, when the air is damp and the light fades quickly, the gorge feels like a place where the boundary between the real and the imagined grows dangerously thin.
The Lonely Shepherd – A Tragic Tale in Stone
Distance: 7km
Elevation: 323m The Lonely Shepherd Route
On the hillside near Llangattock stands the Lonely Shepherd, a limestone pinnacle that rises almost like a figure carved in stone, keeping an eternal vigil over the valley below. Its eerie human shape has long been tied to a story of cruelty, grief, and punishment.
The legend tells of a shepherd who lived a solitary life until he met a widow in need of a home. She became his wife and cared for him, but the shepherd grew harsh and demanding. He forced her to follow him up the mountain to labour at his side, then ordered her to cook and clean late into the night. Exhausted and in despair, she finally threw herself into the River Usk and drowned.
The shepherd searched for her day after day until, as punishment for his cruelty, he was turned to stone. The pinnacle is said to be his petrified form, forever gazing down towards the valley where his wife was lost.
But the tale does not end there. Under the light of the moon, the rock is said to return to human form. The shepherd roams the hillside, calling out in vain for the wife he drove to her death. For generations, women in the valley whitewashed the rock, fearful of meeting his ghost in the darkness. Traces of that white paint can still be seen today.
The walk to the Lonely Shepherd passes across open moorland and quarry scarps, where the landscape feels as raw and restless as the story itself. In the half-light, the solitary
stone looms suddenly from the hillside, its shadow stretching long across the grass – a stark reminder of how cruelty, regret, and legend can live on in the land.
The Fragile Line Between Folklore & History
South Wales is a land where stories cling to the hills as firmly as the mist, where every ruin, ridge and river seems to carry whispers of the past. From the Devil’s Pulpit above Tintern to the haunted halls of Craig y Nos, from Sini’s cursed streams on Mynydd Meio to the shadowed paths of the Clydach Gorge, and finally to the watchful stone figure of the Lonely Shepherd – each of these places is steeped in legend.
Walking them in autumn, when the nights draw in and the valleys grow still, is to feel the weight of those stories pressing close. They remind us that the line between history and folklore is fragile, and that the land itself remembers what we would rather forget.
So this Halloween, lace up your boots, pack a torch, and step into the shadows. Who knows what you might find waiting out there on the trail…
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By Carys Rees
Meet Carys, a member of Central Beacons Mountain Rescue Team as well as a hiker, swimmer, wild camper and paddler who runs the This Girl Walks website which shares routes, hints, tips and discounts to help get you outside in South Wales.
