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Rhossili Down

  • by Will Walker
  • April 21, 2021

The Gower Peninsula in Wales is spectacular walking country and we are looking forward to going back again this summer. Rhossili Down is one of our favourites.

Rhossili is the westernmost village and it can take more than an hour to drive out from Swansea. It has a surprisingly big car park which fills up on a nice summer weekend. Once you get a way from the village, there are not too many people – it’s a vast patch of land owned by the National Trust.

The beacon is at the top of Rhossili Down and at 193 m the highest point on Gower. The Down features mounds, a burial chamber, the ruins of a the remains of a World War II radar installation and great views. The area also seems to be popular with hang gliders.

We like this walk as it’s a great combination of open hillside and beach. The beach curves around the bay and is vast, stretching for about 4.5 km. The sand is usually firm and easy to walk and it will take you more than an hour to walk the entire stretch of the beach.

We like other parts of the Gower, like Three Cliffs Beach as well – this is the furthest away from Swansea, worth the extra few miles and definitely or our favourite.

We used an innovative fabric map of the Gower * to plot the route

It is possible to combine this walk with an excursion to the headlands towards Worms Head. There’s a lookout station that’s easy to walk to, though you can go further on the causeway, tide and weather to the Worms Head rocks – see the map below.

3D fly-through

Press play to follow the walk:

Help - 3D controls

start the fly-through

Tap/click on fly-through and drag to change the camera viewpoint:
– if you drag left-right you basically rotate around Will Walker’s position as he continues the walk.
– if you drag, up and down you change the viewing angle
– once you release it goes back to a standard angle
– to zoom in and out
– pinch on a touchscreen
– mousewheel forward/backwards or rightclick and drag up and down
– or move two fingers up and down on trackpad
The height profile and progress is shown at the bottom.
Tap/click on fly-through to display the controls on a touchscreen device:
slow down journey / pause / speed-up / how fast it plays
3D fly-through control settings / share / full screen

You can ignore speed and local time under stats, we didn’t set any time codes for this walk.

There are a few niggles with the 3D functionality in some browsers: it requires WebGL support which should be enabled by most recent browsers and doesn’t seem to like VPNs.


Length: 8.8 km / 5.5 miles
Time: 2 hours 15 minutes at a swift pace + breaks
Difficulty: Moderate – 231 m total ascent

Interactive Map Click to view in OS Maps

Help - how to navigate this map

full screen icon full screen mode
zoom in icon zoom in
zoom out icon zoom out
compass button compass to orient the map – north at the top
locate-button locate your current position on the map (browser will ask for permission, works best on phones due to use of GPS). We don’t track your location.

Phone/tablet/touchscreen:
– Tap on symbols for more information about the walks and starting points
– Pan map: Tap on map and drag into any direction
– Zoom In/out: Pinch with two fingers
– Tilt map: Tap with two fingers and drag up or down
– Rotate map: Tap with two fingers and rotate
Laptop with mouse:
– Click on symbols for more information about the walks and starting points
– Pan map: Left click on map with mouse and drag into any direction
– Zoom In/out: Mousewheel or ‘+’ ‘-‘ keys on keyboard
– Tilt map: Right click and drag mouse pointer up or down
– Rotate map: Right click and drag mouse pointer left or right

If you are a premium subscriber of OS maps *, there’s also a 3D fly-through available. It looks like this is only available using the browser version, not the android/iOS apps. Compared to the Ayvri fly-through, you have a choice between a non-interactive fly-through and an aerial 3D mode which appears to provide a better overview of the route (see image). It can also display points of interest together with the elevation profile of the walk-great for route planning and allow contour lines to be displayed.

Which fly-through do you like better, the one from OS or Ayvri?

The OS paper maps * covering the walk are

Explorer map 164 Gower

Explorer 164

Landranger map 159 Swansea and Gower

Landranger 159

Rhossili Down in pictures

Views of Rhossili Down and the Bay

View towards Worms Head from Rhossili

Our 3D fly-throughs

Rhossili Down 3D
Rhossili Down

on February 16, 2021 by Will Walker – 0 comments

The Gower Peninsula in Wales is spectacular walking country and we are looking forward to going back…

Quiraing 3D fly-through
Quiraing walk 3D fly-through

on February 1, 2021 by Will Walker – 1 comment

Length: 6.5 km / 4 milesTime: 3 hours at a swift pace + breaksDifficulty: Difficult (climb up to The…

3D fly-through
Winchester 3D – follow Will to Cheesefoot Head

on January 18, 2021 by Will Walker – 1 comment

We came across some cool technology to display outdoor activities in 3D and chose the walk with the …

Rhossili Down 3D

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