Wednesday 14 January - Drygarn Fawr & Carn Gefallt

It was -4 degrees as we set out from Rhayader this morning for the drive into the Elan Valley and even on first glance out of the window an hour earlier, it had been obvious that there was a temperature inversion. The drive alongside the Caban-coch Reservoir was particularly atmospheric, with the fog hanging over the water, leaving visibility on the road clear. I was pleased with the cold conditions: the ground would be frozen, and surely everyone prefers a hill day to be dry and cold rather than warm and wet?

Drygarn Fawr (SN 862 584, 644m)

Start Point: Car park at the SW end of Caban-coch Reservoir - a much smaller car park than I'd expected, but plenty of room for us (as we were the only vehicle there). 

Distance and Ascent: 12.9km, 420m

Mick came with me for the first couple of kilometres of this one - the section along a track. With the amount of ice on its surface, it turned out to be the trickiest bit of the outing. Once I left the tracks and headed out onto the open hill, the ice was more easily avoided and almost all of the ground was frozen solid (the exceptions being a couple of areas of running water). 

 

What a place to be on such a crisp morning, and clear too with the cloud hanging on the other side of the hill, leaving my side clear, and with lumps and bumps spreading out in all directions. 

 

On top of superb surroundings (so much emptiness!) and the favourable ground conditions, when I consulted the map when the ground seemed to be levelling out, it was to find that I had 3.5km left to the summit, but only 150m of ascent, meaning I'd already done the hardest part and the rest of the outing was going to be a breeze. 

 

When I first saw the summit, it appeared much closer than it really was, but (as is to be expected) the map wasn't lying to me as to the distance. After three days of positive temperatures, before last night's plummet back negative, I'd expected all of the snow to be gone, but there was still a sizeable patch just before the summit, around which I opted to detour. 

 

With the big summit cairn visited (and the trig, just for good measure), I was retracing my steps when I looked up to see a Hercules apparently hanging in the air in front of me. I have no idea how they can travel so slowly without falling out of the air, but I managed to take my glove off, get my phone out and get a snap in the small window before it disappeared around the side of the next hill. It's position relative to me meant that I hadn't heard it coming (unlike Mick, back in the car park, who had thought there was a tractor coming, until he realised the tractor was above him). 

 

With no phone signal in the car park meaning that I couldn't keep Mick updated as to progress, he'd asked me at what point he should start to worry. Many times in this situation, I've set myself a timescale that has proved to be overly optimistic and ended up hurrying and anxious about being late, so today I said to give me 4 hours before considering that some ill fate had befallen me. It was only as I descended that I realised that Mick had done his maths wrong when he'd said that he would worry at 1230 (given that we'd set out at around 0915). Fortunately, with the good ground conditions combined with a friendly gradient, I was faster than even my optimistic estimate today.  

 

The intention had been to go straight to the next hill, but I'd also decided on the way down that as Mick was doing a lot of sitting around in car parks and laybys, it would be nice to nip back into Rhayader for lunch at a cafe before driving the few kilometres back out of town. As it went, we didn't need such a big detour, as we pulled in at the Elan Valley Visitor Centre instead, where I had a good lunch and Mick had an incredibly disappointing one. Then onwards to the final hill of this little trip.

 

After a foggy start to the drive, alongside the reservoir the low cloud was only over the water

A lovely frozen track in a largely empty landscape

Still fog in the valley on that side of the hill 

 The wind at the top was absolutely biting!

 

 The overflowing dam by the Visitor Centre was an impressive sight. We had a view of it from the cafe. 

 

Carn Gefallt (SN 940 646; 467m)

 

Start Point: pull in at end of public footpath at SN 949 659 

Distance and ascent: 6.5km, 280m 

 

There was some confusion in my note-making for this one, leading us to stop in a different pull-in from the one I'd originally intended (opposite the farm track at SN 946 657), and thus a slightly different route was taken, although in the grand scheme of things it made little difference on the way up and only a positive difference on the way down. 

 

The downside of approaching the hill from this side was that I needed to pass through a farmyard with the risk of farm dogs. There turned out to be many such dogs (I saw at least 7), but they were all in kennels and in most cases I only saw noses poking through grids on the doors. 

 

My notes (made some months ago now), also told me the grid reference at which I could find an ATV line heading off the track towards the summit, and I assumed that when I'd plotted my route I would have plotted the position of that junction and thus expected that it would be accurately represented on the map on my phone. I now know that I hadn't been so accurate. So it came to pass that I turned up hill at the first set of tyre tracks I found (which was further on than where I'd plotted) without checking the grid reference. The ATV line soon ended in a mass or gorse and dead bracken, but when I say 'soon', it was far enough up the hill that going back down to try a different route was not an appealing option, so I bashed through the gorse, then across heather, until I eventually found the right line.  

 

Theoretically I could follow a good line back down to the track, but a poor decision caused more wiggling (with a bit of reascent) around before I finally did the sensible thing and followed the ATV track. I was almost back at the track when Mick phoned to ask if I knew that I was heading in the wrong direction (I always activate live tracking when there's a phone signal where he's parked so he can see where I am), and by the time I had reassured him that it was an intentional deviation, I was almost back at the spot where I'd originally headed up onto the open hillside.

 

All I then needed to do was to trot back down the track, which would have been straightforward if the gates weren't now closed across the farmyard, with some dogs running around. They didn't give me a friendly welcome as I approached, and there was no way I was entering a farmyard with loose working collies. After a bit of a backtrack and having negotiated a few fences (one protected by a hedgerow) I was within paces of the final fence when I heard a tractor. I simultaneously didn't want to be caught with one leg over a fence, and perfectly prepared to defend myself for trespassing in the face of loose dogs on the public right of way. The former was the path of least resistance though, so I launched myself over the wire and breathed a sigh of relief as I landed on the track the other side. 

 

A bit too eventful an end to the final hill of the trip, but it's good to be now over 600 Marilyns, giving a bit of insurance against summits being moved or demoted. 

I was dubious as to whether this was the ATV track I was looking for and should have trusted my 'this doesn't seem right' instincts. 

Summit selfie, as always.

The correct track, that I followed on the way down. 
 

Tuesday 13 January - Rhiw Gwraidd & Gwastedyn Hill

Rhiw Gwraidd (SO 01610 63437; 441m)

Start Point: By end of track to the north - good parking available a very short way E along road. 

Distance and Ascent: 6.75km, 300m

Weather: Light rain for most of ascent, then dry and increasing hints of brightness.

 

 

 

The weather conditions were probably ideal for this sort of hill, which is to say that if you're going to have miserable weather with curtailed views, you may as well have them on an unspectacular hill.  

 

The initial walk-in was on a track, and at the point that I've marked as '1' on the map snippet above, there was a clear trodden line heading off into the forest, on the line of the public footpath shown on the map, and I gave a few moments thought as to following it. However, I wanted to see if I could head up the west side of the forest, so I continued along the track to the first switchback (marked as '2'), ducking under a few fallen trees on my way. Once there, I waded through some standing water, only to conclude that whilst it looked feasible to get out of the forest, it wouldn't be easy, and thus back to the track I went.  

 

Approaching the E side of the forest (via more fallen trees, one of which was mildly troublesome), it was clear that I could exit the forest to head up the outside edge, as had been my 'if the W side doesn't go' plan. However, just before that point I saw what looked decidedly like a mountain bike trail coming down the hill and decided that if bikes could go that way then so could I. It soon became apparent that it was a dirt bike (as in motorbike) that had been that way, and I followed its tyre line until it suddenly disappeared. Then I just headed up a break, which worked out nicely, and I popped out of the trees not far from the summit. 

 

The two summits of this hill are apparently only 7cm different in height, so clearly I had to visit the other one, which was a simple walk (via one open gate and one easily-crossed fence), out of pasture and onto heather-clad ground. 

 

Contemplating now the retracing of my steps around three sides of a square, I decided it would be worth the 50m bash through the forest in order to go the short route. Despite appearances from the map, I only had to negotiate one fence crossing (the top one) with gateways being visible aiming points, and the gates open, on the other two. Getting back into the forest was easy too, with a tree having fallen across the fence, lowering it to 'step over' level. 

 

Predictably, even knowing that I needed to avoid a small waterfall just before I rejoined the forest track, I managed to come out on the wrong side of the stream, but negotiated my way to a point where the drop was only 3 feet or so. I lowered myself down the drop with remarkable inelegance, then with just a repeat of the ducking under fallen trees, it was plain sailing back to my start point. 

 

(I've got quite a track record of 'short cuts make for long delays' and dodgy descent route decisions, but would like to point out, to my future self as much as anything, that they don't always go badly, and this one was definitely worthwhile.) 

 

 

The official summit (the brown lump peaking over the green field on the right of shot is the second summit) 

The lower top (ish. I think I decided it might be a few paces in front and to the right of me, so took a wander around before heading down)

View, with weather improving

A convenient fallen branch lowering the final fence obstacle to 'step over' level. 

 

Gwastedyn Hill (SN 98683 66150; 477m)

Start Point: Where public right of way leaves the road by Pen-y-Ffynnon (no room to park, but Mick stayed in the car and was ready to move if access was needed (which it wasn't))

Distance and Ascent: 2.75km, 220m

Weather: A bit of sunshine and no rain!

 

The dead-end minor road that leads only to the farm at Pen-y-Ffynnon is gated and newly surfaced, giving Mick the feeling that he was driving up someone's driveway. I reassured him that wasn't the case, and also forewarned him that I didn't expect to find anywhere to park, but that I had identified somewhere reasonably local that he could wait. As it went, he decided to wait blocking the track at the start of the path I was taking, and (unusually, I would say, when he's blocking an access) no-one came along needing to go that way. 

Up one field I went, at the top of which a pedestrian gate had me onto access land, where theoretically I could head straight up the hillside, but I was put off by it being a mass of dead bracken, so I headed NE until I found a trod heading uphill. After a stiff pull up, the ground levelled out and the top proved to be unexpectedly pleasant. 

The difference in height between the two tops on this one is 1.4m, and the distance between them such that I thought it worth the effort to visit both - particularly as the lower top looked more striking than the true summit, being home to a large cairn and a fallen beacon. 

A bog was waded on the way there, a fence easily stepped over (a handy tussock on each side combined with a saggy strand of barbed wire), then it was the final up, past the last remaining dregs of last week's snow. 

Once back through the bog that lays between the two tops, to retrace my steps would have required the reascent of the first top, and whilst it was a pretty negligible climb, I thought I may as well take a more direct route. With the help of gravity and the bracken having fallen towards my direction of travel, I didn't have regrets, although my ankles came to protest about so much traversing of a steep slope. 

Google has decided to put the photos for this one in reverse order, and who am I to argue about the sense of this... 

If Mick hadn't been waiting for me on the other side of the hill, it would have made sense to have just walked down to our accommodation in Rhayader, just down yonder. 

The lower, but more interesting top, with the better views.

Last remaining bit of snow after three days of positive temperatures (forecast to be -3 tonight - will it be enough to freeze the ground on tomorrow's hill?)

The actual summit, with the lower summit visible in middle of shot. You can't see the bog separating them from here. 

When I took this snap at the outset to show how the hill was comprehensively covered in bracken, I didn't know that I would return on a line I could draw onto this snap (my ascent route was behind me as I took this). 

Monday 12 January - Pegwn Mawr & Beacon Hill

It's only a couple of weeks since we were last in Wales bagging Marilyns, but with our trip to Spain delayed by a couple of weeks, and with nothing to do at home, I booked us an apartment in Rhayader for a few days and put a few hills on the agenda.

Our departure from home suffered a false start, when I went to program the SatNav only to realise that I'd neither printed, nor made digitally accessible, my plan. I knew which hills we were going to and what my routes would be, and could manage without having the distance/ascent stats written down, but it would be inconvenient to not have a handy list of all the lat/longs of the intended parking places. A few minutes later, with a freshly printed page of information (also sent to my phone), we headed off again, only to get caught behind a bin lorry. Turning around and driving an extra mile, we easily beat it to the next place where it was able to let traffic pass. I'd like to say that the rest of the journey was smooth sailing, but by then the morning traffic had picked up, and finally, at Newtown, we found the A road we needed to take to be closed. Many tiny lanes later, we arrived at my first hill. I thought Mick would join me on this one, but with the wind-driven rain hitting Erica's windscreen, he opted to sit it out.  

Pegwn Mawr (SO 023 812; 586m)

Start Point: Plentiful parking by wind farm office building at Bryn Dadlau (to NE)

Distance and Ascent: 9.3km, 220m

Weather: outward leg: rain windblown directly into my face; return leg: dry at times and with the wind blissfully behind me.

You'll not fail to notice from the map snippet above, that my route took full advantage of windfarm roads, but what you can't perceive from that snippet is that this was the noisiest windfarm I've ever encountered. The turbines are all old and rusting, and some of them were making the noise of a loud siren. That sirening accompanied me for most of the outing. 

There's really nothing else of note to say about this hill. Well, I suppose the fact that there's an ancient cairn on the summit might be of some note, but I'm not sure I'd have even registered it if I hadn't mentioned it in my notes as the summit feature. 

The return leg was speedy, with the benefit of both gravity and a tailwind, and Mick had a cup of tea and a sandwich waiting for me as I stepped through Erica's door. Then it was onwards to the next hill.

 

Beacon Hill (SO 176 767; 547m)

Start Point: Road to the west - unsatisfactory parking with current snow/mud conditions on the verges. 

Distance and Ascent: 5.7km, 170m

Weather: Really heavy rain as I set out, then showers.

I'd hoped that the closure of the A road wouldn't affect our journey between hills, but after a few miles of driving (during which time we'd passed no sign telling us the road was closed ahead), and only a mile short of the minor road we needed to take, we were turned back and had to take a circuitous route around. We also learnt during that detour that if we'd ignored the signs that had us detouring earlier, we could have reached the first hill via the most expedient route. Turned out that some trees had come down in the storm at the end of last week and were still being cleared. 

The rain was really coming down as we arrived at this hill. I didn't delay my departure in the hope that it would pass, but did don two waterproof jackets. Unsurprisingly, Mick laughed when I asked if he was coming along.

In a drier time of year, this would be a really easy hill, with a good grassy track the whole way to the summit, but today it was made trickier by the lower reaches being slip-slidey mud, and further up the track being still covered in snow (most of which I was easily able to avoid - one bit of which saw me stay on my feet after an impressively long slide). 

Having taken my summit selfie, I wandered over to the other nearby lump, even though it looked significnatly lower, purely because I read the wrong line of my notes, which told me to visit both summits on one of tomorrow's hills. Then I was on my way back down, with rain coming and going and the single patch of blue sky refusing to cast the sun upon me. 

Incidentally, when I planned this trip last Friday, the weather forecast for today was good!