Wales

Present: Keyna (organiser), Shaun, Alan, Claire, Sarah, Maggie, Adriana, Anthony, Andrea, Tarinee

Location: Brecon YH

Putting an extra post-Easter trip in the calendar turned out to be a good idea: ten of us met up in the village of Groesffordd, making our way to the local pub shortly after bagging our beds in the hostel (no bunks, for once, to the relief of some). A few quiet drinks later, we made our way back along the pitch-black lane for a nice early night with no further alcohol. Honest.

Saturday’s walk was scheduled to start at 8.45am SHARP, and as none of us wanted to argue with Keyna it was only shortly after that time when we were in the cars and ready to go. The walk started at Talybont reservoir and took us straight up from the road through fields of newborn lambs to the ridge approximately 650m above the reservoir. Although there were a few threatening moments, the weather pretty much held up as we walked along the ridge and past the waterfalls near Allt Forgan before having lunch near Blaen-y-Glyn. Once on the other side of the reservoir the plan was to drop down and pick up the Taff Trail through the forest: based on her map, Keyna decided to take a direct route through recently-felled trees and deep mud – and rather like the sheep we’d encountered earlier, some of us followed her. Kudos to Shaun, Maggie and Alan who decided to follow the physical path in front of them rather than the theoretical one from the Ordnance Survey, and reached the trail before the rest of us. The total walk was 14.5 miles, and Alan’s mission for the day (which he did choose to accept) was to get Maggie round the whole walk. He considered it a failure when she didn’t walk the last half mile to the cars, waiting at the bridge instead for us to pick her up.


Photo shoot at the waterfalls (Sarah)

Sunday, before the real snow arrived (Sarah)

On Saturday evening it was back to the local pub. Although the dessert menu looked fantastic, the sheer volume of food that preceded it meant we never got that far. Only one person managed the 18oz T-bone steak; no need to mention his name. A different person managed to fall into a hole on the walk back to the hostel; we shan’t mention her name, either…

On Sunday we woke up to the news that it had snowed heavily. In Newbury. All the local hills had to show for themselves was a faint dusting of white on the tops. Shaun went off biking, and the rest of us drove to a car park just south of Talgarth for a walk on the western edge of the Black Mountains. This was another ridge walk, along Y Grib (literal translation: The Ridge), which gave us great views of where we were going and where we’d been. That was right up until, after we’d bagged Pen y Manllwyn and the highest point of the walk at Waun Fach (811m), we reached Pen Trumau (707m)… and the blizzard came in. Keyna had to get the compass out to navigate us off the top, although once we were pointing in the right direction it was fairly easy to locate the correct path. We never did find out why there was a tent pitched near the top of Pen Trumau. On arriving back at the cars after 7.5 miles, some went to the pub before setting off for home to find all of the snow had melted.

Sarah Davies

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