Pen Y Fan

So a month ago I realised that I was going to have a weekend with no husband (he was in India on business) and no student-daughter (she was in Sri Lanka on a conservation thingy), no temporarily-back- home-eldest (he had just left and was starting his three-months backpacking to get him down for his year in Australia), no middle offspring (he doesn’t live at home and was working in London – whilst planning with his partner, a Kiwi, to ‘move back to NZ.) and my lodger was kindly around to dog-sit.

What’s a woman to do?

I certainly wasn’t going to sit around, so I rather hurridly decided I would finally haul myself up PenYFan. Originally I did think I would drive over and park up in the van, but as that seems to be the local storage at the moment as student’s stuff is in there whilst Oz-boy and lodger have theirs stored in my garage, it felt a bit like too much effort to unpack it all for a weekend, to then pack it back up again to take her stuff back to her new flat in August.

I did look at youth hostels, but realised that it was probably D of E season and school trip and activity season, as there were few available beds. My next thought was possibly to camp in my two-man, but as we all know, we can as much rely on the UK weather in June as we can on a sieve to hold gravy and I am a fair weather camper. So I decided to glamp.

I wanted to be somewhere close to one or other of the trails as I’d not yet decided which way I was going to ascend and if I didn’t have my van, it’d be easier to drive to a car park. I ended up choosing Camp Cynrig. It is not a large site and doesn’t have facilities for you to bring your own tent or motorhome. It has just the three options; a cabin that sleeps 6, a small bell tent that sleeps 4, and a large bell tent that sleeps 5. Each of the bell tents has a shepherd’s hut kitchenette and shower unit for the sole use of the occupants. There is also a really lovely aesthetic to it all as it’s been handbuilt by the owner. I am a real sucker for handbuilt and lots of wood! You do, however need to bring your own sleeping bag (or duvet), pillows and towel, which might be a make or break for some people, especially if you are thru’hiking in the Breacons and carrying all your own things. For me, however, all I needed to do was actually remember to put them in – a feat in itself!

I initially decided to do the Beacons Way path up to Corn Du, roughly a 9.5‑mile hike with some steep uphills, then Pen y Fan, Cribyn and Fan y Big. I wanted something that would challenge me a bit more and start getting me ready for Ben Nevis in October.

What I hadn’t accounted for was that the weekend I’d chosen happened to be one of the Fan Dance weekends (thank goodness for Facebook groups). For anyone as clueless as I was, it’s an SAS‑style race where competitors run up Pen y Fan, down the other side, then turn around and run straight back up again before finishing where they started. Clearly only for the slightly mad and ultra‑fit. It also meant my original plan to park at Pont ar Daf was scuppered, as it was going to be full by 7.30am.

So it was back to the drawing board to plan a longer hike from my campsite and avoid moving the car altogether. According to the map, I should have been able to hike up Cefn Cyff, follow the ridge from Fan y Big via Cribyn to Pen y Fan, head on to Corn Du (if my legs and the weather behaved), then retrace a little and descend via Cefn Cwm Llwch. But when I arrived at the campsite, Rob, the owner, wasn’t convinced there was any route I could take directly from there. Instead, he suggested I drive to a farmer’s field “somewhere left, left, and left at a T‑junction,” which was about as precise as it got.

So, up at the crack of a gnat’s chuff, I was on the road by 7am hunting for any unassuming farmer who might have left a field open with an honesty box. No such luck. I put Nant Cwm Llwch into the sat nav, vaguely remembering a National Trust car park somewhere around there, and figured I’d adapt my route from wherever I ended up. The beauty of Pen y Fan is that there are plenty of ways up.

After being sent down a dead‑end road (my sat nav loves to wind me up), I came to a gate and a field full of cars and campers. I decided to play ignorant, parked next to another walker, laced up my boots, and headed off.

The route took me up Cwm Llwch to the obelisk which, while steep, is a steady climb. It took me about 45 minutes, as it always does, to regulate my breathing and stop sounding like a dying hippo (thank asthma for that!). Once that settled, the clouds began to clear (in my head too), and it turned into a lovely climb. The lake, which you only glimpse from the ridge if you come up from Pont ar Daf, appeared about three‑quarters of the way up. I’d been on the ridge for about twenty minutes before I met the first hiker of the day. Then came a bit of a scramble onto Corn Du, nothing dramatic, but enough to keep things interesting.

From Corn Du the sun started to break through, and so did the hoards of people coming from the Pont ar Daf direction. The walk from Corn Du to Pen y Fan dips slightly before rising again, but there are handrails and stone paths to help. I was very glad I’d started early because even by 10am there was a small queue for the trig‑point photo. I’d hate to have been there later.

Next up was Cribyn. This descent and ascent were bigger, but again, nothing technical, just a long, steady uphill. I rewarded myself on the summit with a boiled egg and a pasty while an enthusiastic selection of biting insects tucked into me. Then came the question of whether I had it in me to continue to Fan y Big. It’s a much longer stretch from Cribyn, with what appears to be a huge drop and climb. As the day was heating up, I decided to give it a miss, and in hindsight, I don’t regret it as it took me twice as long to get back to the car from Cribyn than it did to get up!

From the top of Cribyn there seemed to be two marked paths down. Bryn Teg was incredibly steep at the start, and I wasn’t convinced my knees would thank me. When you’re walking alone, you make different decisions. If my knees gave out or I fell, help would be harder to come by. End of. So I joined the Cambrian Way instead, descending to the bottom of the Fan y Big ascent before turning left and following the path down to meet the road and the Three Rivers Ride.

I’ll say it now: the Three Rivers Ride is basically “the road,” and it was my least favourite part of the day, a monotonous slog on hard tarmac, with the heat rising well into the mid twenties.

The descent from Cribyn via the Cambrian Way was mostly along what looked like a stream bed or mountain run‑off. There’s rock laid down, but it can be slippery when wet. I wouldn’t enjoy it as an ascent, that’s for sure. But it was a very gradual descent, and although much longer, it was definitely the better way back to the car for me.

The whole walk came to exactly ten miles (without even needing to walk around the car a few times to round it off!) with a total ascent of 2,863 ft and descent of 2,917 ft. It took me nearly six hours, including a half‑hour breakfast break on the top.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable day and perfectly manageable as a solo female. The weather conditions were good, although, of course, I was fully prepared with rain gear, and I only needed my wind jacket on the very top of Cribyn, not because it was cold, but because I’d been sweating and I knew that sitting down I would chill fast.