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!