Where Cad East sits
Cad East is the eastern position on the same block of hillside as Cad West, at the head of the Tal-y-llyn valley beneath Cadair Idris. As the Old Vicarage at Corris explains, “Cad” is short for Cadair Idris itself, the group of peaks on the north side of the valley; the two Cads simply face different ways off the same ground.
MachLoop.co.uk gives the position as 52.7036°N, 3.8439°W, postcode LL40 2SH — a wide Tal-y-llyn postcode, so a guide to the right stretch of road rather than a destination. The road that serves it is the A487 between Corris and Cross Foxes: from Machynlleth, north past Corris (5.6 miles from town) and up the pass; from the north, south from the Cross Foxes junction. Dolgellau is 16 miles from Machynlleth on the same road.
Two ways in, and both have small parking
Cad East has the most awkward access of the popular spots, because there are two entirely different approaches. Scramble’s LFA7 guide describes the direct one: take the A487 south from the Cross Foxes Inn and turn left onto a gated road after about a kilometre, which brings you high onto the hill and leaves only a short climb. Spotterguide.net describes small parking to the left at the top and a ladder stile over the fence, and gives the walk from there as around 1.5 kilometres gaining about 120 vertical metres of footpath.
The catch is capacity. Shootsmart.co.uk is specific and sobering: space for around five carefully parked cars in one area and three to four in another, filling by 7am, and it recommends the main road parking at Cad West as the more reliable option. That is the second approach — park in the big A487 layby and walk across — and shootsmart.co.uk is honest that this makes for a harder climb than the ten-minute one from the back road.
Whichever way you come, gates matter here more than anywhere: spotterguide.net puts it in capitals — always close the gates. This is a working hill farm, and the road you drive up is somebody’s access.
The walk, and what it asks of you
The published figures cluster around a mile and 400 feet. MachLoop.co.uk gives roughly one mile and around 400 feet of climb, graded moderate; the Minffordd Hotel at Tal-y-llyn gives 0.90 miles and 422 feet; spotterguide.net gives about 1.5 kilometres and 120 vertical metres. If you use the gated back road, Scramble’s guide reduces it to a ten-minute climb.
MachLoop.co.uk describes the ground as rough, uneven hillside, and that is the honest description — upland grass, tussock and sheep trods, no surfaced path, no steps, nothing to hold. It is a genuine if short hill walk, not suitable for wheelchairs or pushchairs and not a place to be in trainers. Boots, waterproofs, food, water and a paper map are what MachLoop.co.uk lists for the hillside positions, and low cloud is the reason for the map.
What you are looking at, and the light
Cad East is a topside position: MachLoop.co.uk describes valley walls below the aircraft and open sky above. Aircraft, when they come, arrive from your right and cross right to left, and MachLoop.co.uk notes something photographers value here — noticeably more warning time than at most other spots, because you can see a long way down the valley. The Minffordd Hotel describes the resulting angles as belly shots and head-on approaches. MachLoop.co.uk suggests 400 to 600mm equivalent, and on a clear day says the view reaches Bala Lake and Snowdon.
On light there is no disagreement: this is a morning spot. Scramble’s guide says best in the morning until about 14:00; shootsmart.co.uk says only really good in the morning but acceptable most of the day; spotterguide.net has good light from sunrise until later in the morning. The usual pattern for a full day is Cad East early and Cad West after lunch, which the photography page goes into properly.
Who Cad East suits
MachLoop.co.uk lists it as best for photography, beginners and panoramic views, and the warning time is the reason: it is much easier to get a camera up and settled when you can see something coming than when it appears over a ridge already alongside you. It suits an early riser, and it suits somebody who wants a big view whether or not anything flies, because the panorama up the valley is worth the walk on its own.
It suits families less well than Cad West does, mainly because of the parking: arriving with children to find nowhere legal to leave the car, then facing the longer climb from the main road, is a poor start. If the parking is the worry, the Bwlch holds more cars; if it is the walk, the flat option is the Corris Craft Centre, which MachLoop.co.uk’s beginners’ guide rates the only fully flat, no-climbing spot on the Loop.
The limitations, said plainly
Nobody can tell you when a jet will come, or whether one will. There is no published day-to-day timetable for low flying in LFA7. MachLoop.co.uk describes common flying hours as roughly 09:00 to 17:00 Monday to Friday and then states flatly that there is no schedule, ever; blank days happen because of cancelled training, weather and holidays. Even on a busy day the crews may run a different part of the Loop and never appear in front of Cad East. The Old Vicarage at Corris, under the flight line at Corris, logged an average of 3.5 passes a weekday in a June 2024 sample with a best day of 21 — useful for calibrating expectations rather than planning around.
The hill itself is exposed with no shelter, the wind is stronger up there than at the car, phone signal is patchy, and cloud on the tops both hides the valley and stops the flying. Our when they fly page sets out what can honestly be known in advance; planning a Loop day deals with the likelier question of what to do with a blank one, and the weather page with what Welsh mountain conditions mean for kit. Getting here covers reaching the valley.
One last thing, and it is what keeps access open: leave gates as you find them, keep dogs on a lead near livestock and take everything home, as the Countryside Code published by Eryri National Park asks.
Day trips