Monday 17 November - Rhialgwm & Allt y Main

Weather: Gloriously sunny morning with just a few clouds bubbling around later.

Rhialgwm (SJ 055 211; 540m)

Start Point: layby by Ty Cerrig on B4396

Distance and ascent: 7.4km, 290m

If I'd looked at the 1:25k map on the hill, or the notes I'd made in advance, I would have known that the old track did, in fact, go almost to the summit, if I'd just taken more trouble to keep myself on it. 

There's a minor road off the B4396 that would have got me nearer to this hill, but my journey up there on StreetView had told me that we wouldn't be driving it. It's narrow, hemmed in by hedges, doesn't have passing places, and I'd read that the road surface degrades significantly after the house that's up there. Erica doesn't like rutted roads (she hangs low, with her wheelchair-accessible lowered floor), and it was no hardship to walk the extra distance from the B road.

Beyond the minor road was a byway, and it put me in mind of routes I've run and walked in France. That lasted until I got out of the trees and was faced with a field covered in dead (but not yet entirely flattened) bracken. A series of trods took me up through most of it, to a relatively newly replaced barbed-wire fence. A trodden line immediately next to the fence, via a couple of rotting sheep, took me to another fence, but that one I was able to step over (I had to go slightly uphill to where a rock effectively made the fence lower - pity I left my poles down at the corner, as it was rather steep making my way back down the other side).

I then picked up an old grown-over (but still pretty obvious) track, but lost it where there was a tree growing in the middle of it and I went right around the tree, missing the fact that the track turned left at that point. The subsequent yomp through dead bracken, then heather, was harder going than I'd expected on this hill. 

The reward came at the top. What an excellent summit! Helped by the weather, the views were extensive in every direction. It had been worth the effort. 

I more or less retraced my steps for the return, managing to walk more of the old track on the way back.  

A quick lunch back in Erica, and off to my final hill of the trip.

(Looks like we're going with photos out of order again today) 

Up the bridleway

Summit selfie

The friendly heather, with a line through it, and my first view of the trig point.

This would have been somewhere between the stuff of nightmares and impossible in peak bracken season (although in fairness, I was trespassing here, as the right of way through the forest is blocked by most of the trees having snapped in half during some storm). 
 

Allt y Main (SJ 162 151; 356m)

Start Point: end of minor road, SW of summit

End Point: Layby on A495, SE of summit

Distance and Ascent: 4.5km, 190m 

 

I would strongly advise against my route of dropping straight down the hillside from the summit. 

Mick dropped me at the end of the minor road to the SW of the hill, where I know that other people have parked. However, the only off-road space there, is through a gate just beyond the road end, and it's just off a track that leads to a house. Neither of us felt convinced that it was somewhere we should be parking, so rather than waiting there, Mick drove around to the layby I had originally intended to be my starting point (before laziness caused me to go for the route of least ascent). 

There's a track, then a path, that leads the whole way to the summit and with less than 200m to be gained over the course of 2.5km, it's an easy walk. Unusually for a hill in the UK, there's even a bench up there, and it's a fine place for a seat, being an excellent viewpoint. 

Having admired the views, I then took a rush of blood to my head and decided that instead of following the entirely sensible, but indirect route, of retracing my steps, I would just drop down the side of the hill, back to the track that I could clearly see below me. That was a mistake. Or to put it more precisely, that was a MISTAKE! Will I ever learn? 

It was fine for the first section, until I hit a big tangle of brambles, with two options: climb steeply back up, or bash through them. I bashed through (my Paramo trousers protected me from scratches). It was slow and awful. To make matters worse, I got to within a linear pace of the track, to realise that I was a vertically above it, with no way of getting down. Another big patch of brambles lay on my escape line. By the time I got back onto the track, it was clear that the long way around would have been quicker, easier and far more sensible*. 

The rest of the way was plain sailing, even if there was a period of great confusion in conversation with Mick when I found that my intended path didn't exist and thus I was going to come out further up the road than expected. We weren't helped by Mick looking at the wrong map, and thus not being able to fathom which path I was talking about. All was resolved when, to my great surprise, I came out exactly where Mick was parked. It turned out that the fault was my misinterpretation, at the planning stage, of where the layby I could see on a StreetView lay on the 1:50k map. 

So, five days and twelve more summits collected. A good time has been had, and thanks go to Mick for ferrying me around.

(*I've just checked the stats to see if my short cut really was slower, or if it just felt slow. Going back the way I'd come on the tracks would have been 1.5km which even at a walk would have taken me 15 minutes. I probably would have run some or all of it so it would have likely taken me 11 minutes. My ill-advised descent route took me 12 minutes.) 

As I now look at the view behind me in this snap, I realise that the notable hill over yonder is the one I'd been up earlier. 

 

At the risk of expressing a controversial view, I think that more summits in the UK (and more paths) would benefit from having benches installed.