Carnedd Wen & Craig Goch/Mynydd Cwmcelli

Waking at 0650 I went straight to the window. The pampas grasses weren't dancing violently and nor did rain seem to be lashing. By good fortune, it turned out that this slice of Wales was within a narrow gap between a weather warning for high winds to the west and one for rain to the east. It was still going to be wet and windy, but it looked manageable, and the gusts weren’t due to hit 50mph until 11am, so we made haste to get out as early as we reasonably could (without sacrificing essentials like breakfast and cups of tea).

Carnedd Wen (SH 924 099; 523m)

Start Point: shallow layby on A458 (to N) at SH 953 127.

Distance and ascent: 11.3km, 350m

 I reckoned this was a good choice of hill, with half of the route being deep within a forest. Perhaps not the obvious choice during a named storm, but the inside of a big forest is pretty well protected from the wind, so easier going for me, and unlikely that any trees would be blown over onto me (talking of which, three days ago, on a not-windy day, I was running along a lane near home when a dead branch fell off a tree moments after I’d passed under it). Plus, it looked to be a largely quite dull outing (for the same reason – half of it was hemmed into a commercial plantation), and better to do a dull hill on a dull day.

Had it been the middle of summer, with water levels low, I might have set out from the track further west along the A458, but I’d read reports that the mapped footbridge there no longer exists and there was no way I was going to be fording today’s raging torrent. So, I set out from the next track to the east, and took advantage of its bridges.

As I made my way into the cloud and then into the forest, I looked down on the A-road that I must have travelled hundreds of times between 1986 and 2008, and contemplated that never during that time did I look to the SW and think “I must nip up there one day”!

With 300m of ascent over the course of 5.5km, it was an easy walk too – all on good track and never steep – at least not until the few steps to get up onto the embankment behind the quarry at the summit. I’d been a bit confused before I got there, as the track I’d been following seemed to be going downhill before the summit. Even when I finally saw the lie of the land, I was further confused when I couldn’t see the trig point, but it turned out to just be hidden behind the rear bank of a quarry.

Whilst I was doing all this, Mick had driven a mile back along the road, not wanting to sit in such a narrow layby, being rocked every time a vehicle sped past. So, I called him to give him my ETA back at the layby, before I headed back down the way I’d come. The wind was head-on for part of the return leg once I was out of the forest, making forward progress harder than it might have been, but it certainly wasn’t stopping me in my tracks or blowing me around, so I saw no reason not to follow this outing with my second intended hill.

Summit selfie

Uninspiring views

Craig Goch/Mynydd Cwmcelli (SH 804 099; 468m)

Start Point: at end of track to NE of hill.

Distance and ascent: 3km, 188m

We were merrily driving in to this one when, at around SH 832103 we came upon an ‘unsuitable for motor vehicles’ sign. That caused a pause. I looked at the map and said “Well, I could walk from here”, but it seemed more sensible to park on the far side of the cattle grid that lay before us. Having got to that point, we contemplated the road ahead and a much older ‘Unsuitable for Heavy Goods Vehicles” sign and wondered: is it really unsuitable for motors, or just unsuitable for HGVs? I hadn’t read any reports of any issues with that road, so we proceeded. It was fine. A 20% gradient for much of the way, as various road signs told us, but no sharp bends and a good road surface (when I lived in Barmouth, I only ever drove up to the nearest road end to the house three or four times, but it involved a very narrow road, hemmed in by walls, with one section so steep and with a bend so severe that you’d only have three wheels on the ground as you went around it and it was almost impossible, in a 2-wheel drive, in wet conditions – I had visions of something like that, which also displayed an ‘unsuitable for motors’ sign).

Having arrived at the parking area without any drama, I had the unpleasant moment of putting my soggy waterproof back on, then I was off, up a track that looks more like a path, and that was running with water – making it a more interesting outing than had it been a forest road sort of a track. Getting towards the top of the track, the summit looked to be towering above me and I opted not to attack it head on, but rather to continue around to its east side for a gentler ascent. Ha! I could have taken a gentle line, but instead I opted for the eroded scar that, in retrospect, was ridiculously steep and inadvisable in today’s conditions. I resolved not to the return the same way.

The wind on the summit was nowhere near as strong as I had on some tops I did at the end of May, and the rain was unarguably persistent, but relatively light by now. The cloud was also well above me on this hill, so there were views to be had.

It’s rather unforgiveable that I then headed in the wrong direction off the summit. I’d decided to descend to the east and remember thinking about getting my compass out to check which way was east. I wasn’t even wearing gloves to use that as an excuse, but my compass stayed in my pocket and I relied on my sense of direction, which I’ve long known to be highly faulty. Fortunately I’d not gone far when I realised my error and if I hadn’t admitted to it here, I don’t think the indirect route shown by my recorded track tells too much of a tale of stupidity.

The path-like track and my summit ahead of me

Summit views

I can’t explain the reason for the pumpkin on the table, but the cakes were good!