Date walked: 9th September 2016

Distance: around 12 miles

Map used: OS Explorer OL 1 2- Brecon Beacons National Park (Western area)

Guide followed: Cambrian Way  by A.J. Drake – 7th edition

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Today Paul, Neil and I  were joined by a good friend of Neil’s called Malvern (no, I never did ask where he got such an unusual name from). A jolly fellow, he had stayed with Neil and they and Paul had kindly done the clever stuff with the cars earlier on so that I could have a lie-in. We met around 11.30am.

And jolly well equipped, too

Neil had proposed one of the “official alternative” routes as defined by Drake by heading south and taking a ridge walk on the side of Fan Hir which he (rightly) predicted should be spectacular. This is an area of the Brecon Beacons National Park called the Black Mountain and  the peaks that we would climb today are collectively called the Carmarthen Fans.

Neil  had also suggested driving down to a convenient point on the A4067 to start this section. I drew the line at this, insisting that we must always start where we last left off.

Our reward was a bit of an uncomfortable scramble along a fence edge…

….. followed by a very pleasant mile along an old railway embankment.

Although this had all but disappeared at one point.

Neil’s forbearance did not run to keeping to the logical footpath for my indulgence however, which would have added about two miles to the walk. This meant that we had to strike across the side of the hill towards a water treatment works.  Which proved to be a lot harder than it looked, the ground being boggy, very rutted and waist high in reeds.

At least no one got into assigning blame for this bit

When we got to the boundary of the water works we also had to trespass and climb the fence in order to reach something resembling a path.

I think Malvern was about to dive over

When we did find a path, Neil confidently led us to a field on the edge of a little hamlet where there were two friendly horses…..

….. and a washing line of very boring but very white underwear.

I notice one vest is off-white

We crossed the A4067 a had a short section by the River Tawe, picking up the Beacons Way at a property called Ty Henry. But our acquaintance was brief as the Way takes a lower level route than we were destined for.

It was time for a climb.

Or in Paul’s case, a wade

As we climbed, so we had a good view back to our last peak of Fan Gyhirych.

Nice day!

Paul did his usual of forging ahead on the climbs. Neil was struggling a bit so we had a lunch break during which Malvern told me a depressing story of how his business was getting hammered by the post- brexit vote fall in the value of the pound. I’m afraid I couldn’t face telling him that I was partly responsible.

A fine figure of a man

But eventually we all got high enough up the side of the hill to see the ridge of Fan Hir ahead of us.

It was about a two-mile gentle climb to reach the highest point of over 2,400 feet and as we climbed, the views around us got better and better.

Ahead, we had a fabulous escarpment that echoed that at Pen-y -Fan.

As we marvelled at the view we joined briefly by a wizened guy – of about our age- who had climbed up from The Beacons Way. He had no map and didn’t seem that bothered by not really knowing where he was. He volunteered that he organises bluegrass festivals and was on  a break between a couple. Anyway, we showed him where he was and he zoomed off, leaving us to do some more marvelling.

At one particular outcrop of rock above a near-sheer fall of several hundred feet Neil took marvelling a bit too far for my comfort.

I’m sure he would have thought twice if he had known he was exposing his tummy to the blogosphere

I warned him that I would be bringing one of those long dog leads in  future to thwart his near-suicidal tendencies. I don’t usually give you views back as it can be a bit confusing but here’s one I had to share.

At a col called Bwlch Gledd, The Beacons Way joined us again and we had a view down onto the glacially formed  Llyn y Fan Fawr.

Neil was just awestruck

We kept the view of the lake for half a mile,

 As we passed the lake, still climbing, either the cloud level dropped or the extra altitude brought us into the murky sky.

Good pavement

Not far after Bwlch Gledd we passed a carefully constructed shelter….

…. where Neil wanted his picture taking……

All it needs now is a roof

…… and Paul didn’t.

And just the other side of  this, at 2,631 feet was the highest point of the day’s walk -the Trig Point of Fan Brycheiniog, where a snap was required for all of us.

Not bad for a selfie

In case you are counting (which I have not been) Fan Brycheiniog is check point 14 of the Cambrian Way.  No one was there to check. At Fan Foel, about half a mile further on there was a cairn from which on a clear day there would have been a fabulous view.

But not today, though as we turned sharply south-west, briefly, and then west, the clouds began to lift, giving us some glimpses of the surrounding countryside.

We could see enough to know that we were still walking on the top of an escarpment though some of the time we still didn’t see much more than that. What I did see, which was very intriguing, was a long rectangular shaped mound which I could make no sense of but looked man-made.

Lovely moss covered rocks

From Fan Foel we had quite a steep descent, only to have to climb back up again to the peak called Picws Du. The descent was marked by a series of wide wooden railings which we took to be an attempt to control path erosion, by pushing us to the side of the obvious track.

Still doesn’t make much sense to me

If this was their purpose they seemed far wider than they need have been. There were more on the way up.

Neil was flagging now but Malvern stuck with him for encouragement

The cloud had all but lifted now and looking back we had a great view of the face of the escarpment….

Funny that you don’t often see sheep walking on sheep tracks

…. and I zoomed in for another view of my mysterious mound.

Does that look natural to you?

With much clearer skies it was really exhilarating to look down on the miles of empty moorland, its surface veined with dozens of small streams.

One larger river was marked on the map as Afon Sychlwch and we could see that it was joined by another running into it from the west.

A few minutes later we saw that this second river was in fact a man -made outflow from Llyn y Fan Fach.

Our path took the gently descending path along the top of the escarpment called Bannau Sir Gaer.

Looking back, here

The escarpment face above the lake has several deep channels formed by rainwater gouging out the gritty soil and soft rock.

These were strangely compelling; I imagined being shooting down them in the winter on a toboggan – alpine skiers do such crazy things standing up and call  it a Black Run.

Our path took a near horse-shoe route above the lake. The view was just fabulous and we all “ooed” and “ahhed” in chorus ………

…….and when the sun dropped below  the clouds and we repeated ourselves with even more enthusiasm, adding several “look at that’s”.

It was late afternoon and the distant hills began to recede behind the misty atmosphere.

It really was hard to leave such a special spot, but we still had a couple of miles to go and we did not want to end up walking in the dark.

As descents go it was relatively gentle at first.

After a last look back at the Llyn….

its extraordinary but no doubt has a very simple explanation as to how the colour of water changes depending on where you look at it from

… the view of the lake was replaced by the more managed countryside of the hillside.

It was quite steep at the end, Paul leading the way.

We needed to leave the Beacons Way to retrieve Pauls Car; Mavern’s homing pigeon instinct set us in the right direction and we were soon fording a little stream near the road.

It was really quite gloomy when we finally got to the car; not that you would know it from this last pic.

A wee bit fuzzy.

What a fantastic finale to our traverse of the Brecon Beacons; I feel so lucky to have such landscape on my doorstep.  It was hard to think that the next few days would be much tamer walking.

It was a twisty, turney route in the car  back to the start of the walk and from there we retreated to the Ancient Briton for a drink and a meal (great beers, good food, friendly staff). Paul celebrated by knocking his pint over the table and my lap. Its a Welsh thing.