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
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.
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