Walking: Cambrian Way Stage 7 - Storey Arms to Glyntawe

I was looking for some long walks that I could do to really stretch my legs and build up my mountain walking skills again.  One of the criteria I had was that it would need to start at a location my husband could drop me off at when going to his work.  Thankfully this wasn't a critical I needed to follow for the end poin as I'm very lucky in that he was happy to do a detour on his way home to collect me.  The two that fitted best were stage 7 of the Cambrian Way and stage 5 of the Beacons Way.  The Cambrian Way looked like it would require me to do a lot more navigational work so I decided to go for that first.

The directions for this walk can be found pretty easily online and in books so I won't go into that here, and I didn't quite follow it exactly as I started at the Pont ar Daf car park instead of Storey Arms and carried on walking a little longer once I'd reached Glyntawe so end up at Penycae further south.  So all in all I walked about 25km /15.5miles that day.

It did say in the directions for this walk that there were times where the route would either be faint or non-existent and there were a few times where I found myself just staring at my compass trying to work out what feature in the landscape I could use to navigate to.  For me though, this is the type of walking I really enjoy as it feels a little more like an adventure and you're a lot less likely to come across another person.  You also have to use your brain more and it was a good way to test my rusty navigational skills.  That being said, I was glad that it was a bright after a few days of dry weather as navigating some of these areas on a misty day when your feet are disappearing into wet, boggy vegetation wouldn't have been anywhere near as enjoyable.

There was a little bit of history to find on this walk, with a Roman Road to cross and a Bronze Age standing stone, Maen Elia, to look at.  Maen Elia was particularly striking against the surrouding landscape and a good reminder of just how long people have actually been using this mountainous area that we see as being wild.  There wasn't as much nature as I had hoped to come across which isn't too surprising as this is still quite a managed landscape, but I still got to listen to skylarks as I wandered a long and see a few red kites here and there.  One even flew right over the top of me.  Mostly I just enjoyed the quiet and the lack of people interaction I had despite me doing this walk on a Sunday.

I didn't find the end section of this walk quite as enjoyable as the start as you're just walking along an old tram line with not much change in the landscape to see.  Though it was still interesting to see just how far into the Beacons mining actually got and how the evidence of it isn't as obvious as you would think it would be seeing as it didn't end all that long ago  The village of Penwyllt was apparently once a thriving area due to mining, but you wouldn't think it when you walk past it now.  From here you walk through some actual fields, directly through the middle of someone's farm (which definitely felt a little weird), and a long some road before reaching the end point on the A4067.  It was here that I turned south and followed the footpath that runs parallel with the road to finish my walk with a pint in Penycae.  However, there is a much closer pub to the finish if you want to follow suit.

All in all I would say that this was a pretty good walk, though not necessarily one I would recommend if you don't have any navigational skills just yet.  It's obviously not a particularly popular walk and that means does you get to spend some time on your own.  There's are some interesting features in the landscape to look at and break up the walk a little.  The fact that I had beautiful weather on the day definitely helped, and that I didn't have a large backpack on my back.  This walk gave me a really good idea about the area and I enjoyed myself, though my feet maybe not so much.  Next - the Beacons Way, at least part of it.