Walking in the Brecon National Park

>>  Sunday, June 28, 2015

 I went on a walking weekend with Guiding in the Brecon National Park last weekend.

It started gently enough. I took myself on a wander to the water on Friday evening.













I found the reservoir plug hole.  I was very good and did not pull it!


On Friday evening I had to choose which group of walkers to attach myself to the next day.  They were all experienced mountain walkers and most of them qualified advisers and instructors,  it was rather daunting.

I didn't want to put myself in a place that would hold the others back but at the same time I wanted a good challenge.

 There was a bunch of very friendly people that seemed to be going somewhere I thought I could manage.

My backpack had everything in it the kit list said and weighed a lot.  I didn't believe for one minute I'd need most of it.















Although seeing mountain rescue parked up at a very early part of the walk and at a point that would still be considered as easy I started to feel a little more worried.











Upwards continued.




















Cribyn didn't seem too bad, it is 2608 feet.  I think that is a good achievement.


 We went along the ridge and back down it, and on the other side towered another to be climbed.












Pen-y-fan at 2,907 ft. It is the highest mountain south of Snowdonia in Britain.


There were horses roaming really quite high up.

The clouds came in.







 And so did the rain.

It became increasing difficult to stop and take photos and keep up and as the climb continued it would actually have been verging on dangerous to be stopping and messing in pockets for my camera.
 Have a look at this if you want to see what the last part of the climb looks like.

The top looked like this.

I got out my survival bag (I used everything in my back pack during the day except my head torch and whistle.) and sat on it whilst I ate my sandwiches in the rain, with it howling a gale.

Whilst I was wearing every waterproof I had and feeling damned cold, a chap came by wearing dry trousers, a t-shirt and sunnies - seriously, what parallel universe did he climb it in!  Then a few young kids arrived - admittedly they were moaning at their parents saying that would not walk a step further - slightly awkward given that there was no other way out of there - but I was not going to let them take away from my achievement!

There were a lot of teenagers up there, in small groups, some pitching a tent, a few eating pack ups and talking about where they were last night, normal teenager stuff but in a place I never expected to see them.  It gave me a good hope for the next generation, there are some that do get out of bed and walk up mountains and not because they are made to or on DofE - just because it was Saturday and that's what they did, I liked that.

Anyway, we went down and the rain came in harder, rather than going up a third mountain in the slippy wet (the coming back down being more of a bother than the up) we went off into the forest for an extended walk.  It was completely satisfying.  A day of achievement and pride in myself.

I enjoyed it so much I climbed another 1900 feet on Sunday morning.

I had no idea how much I would like it,  it was helped by the marvellous people I was with, but I think I now have a walking bug.




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