Walking: Carmarthen Fans and glacial cwms (the Black Mountain area)

I finally got to go on a nice long walk with Ed again, which we haven't really been able to do since moving to Wales.  We've been wanting to walk in the Black Mountain area for a while as we had heard that the views were pretty amazing and it's a less popular area than the central Beacons, meaning that we were much more likely to be able to enjoy a walk without too many other people.  The weather wasn't meant to be particularly great on the day we had planned to do this walk, but we'd worked out this walk would probably take us around 4.5 hours and that's an acceptable amount of time for us to be out in bad weather.

The inspiration for this walk came from the Cicerone book 'Walking in The Brecon Beacons' and we mostly followed the route recommended in it, apart from at the end when we decided to take a more direct route to the car park away from the work happening at Llyn y Fan Fach.  We started at the Llyn y Fan Fach car park and, as the stream was too high for us to cross at the recommended point, headed back along the road to connect with the more southern Beacons Way that leads up to the Bannau Sir Gaer ridge.

There were some steep bits as you head up, but for the most part, this was a very manageable section for us and we didn't feel the need to take a break at any point.  We knew the weather would mean we wouldn't always get a great view, but when we did first get to the ridge of Bannau Sir Gaer we could see down onto Llyn y Fan Fach.  This view was only marginally ruined by all the vans etc that needed to be there and the very dubious myth that's connected to it.

The cloud did come back down again after this and we ended up walking the rest of the ridge surrounded by white and getting quite wet.  However, the path was very obvious and we were pretty confident that we could safely navigate the rest of the ridge so we carried on.  We also quite like walking in these conditions as it's a completely different experience walking whilst being cocooned in the cloud.  You tend to come across a lot fewer people in these conditions as well. 

Despite the lack of views, we were still able to pick out navigational features like the cairn at Picws Du (which is probably a prehistoric funerary monument), and the trig point at Fan Brycheiniog which marked the highest point of this walk.  There are a few paths along this way that head down from the ridge back into the valley, but we stayed at the top until we reached Bwich Gledd and then headed down to Llyn y Fan Fawr.

We hadn't been able to see this lake from the top, but it was a very pretty site once we were there and it also looked like a very good body of water to swim in.  Something we've taken note of for a later trip.  The clouds did of course lift once we had gotten down and we got a much better view of this glacier valley from this point on.  We were both pretty wet by this point, but still nicely warm and just a little less worried about the puddles we were putting our feet into as we headed west following the northern Beacons Way back towards Llyn y Fan Fach.

It was just before reaching Llyn y Fan Fach that we stopped following the route recommended by the book after we had noticed the path that cut off and headed more directly towards the Llyn y Fan Trout and Salmon Hatchery.  Unfortunately, it's the wrong time of year to watch the trout jumping, but it was still a surprisingly pretty spot to look around nonetheless.  

When we had been at the top we had decided that it had been far too windy and wet to stop for a lunch break, and as neither of us was feeling particularly hungry we decided to just keep going until we felt like we needed to eat.  This actually ended up being when we had gotten back to the car and had changed into a set of nice dry clothes that we always keep in the back of our car.  I actually find it surprisingly easy to walk long distances without eating and I don't think I'm alone in that.  There must just be something about walking that shuts everything else off, but you definitely feel very hungry once you do finally stop.

This was a great walk and we enjoyed it despite the lack of views.  The weather didn't put us off, in fact, it meant we got to enjoy it with fewer people than probably would have been there had the weather been great.  It's definitely an area we'd like to explore more of as it feels a little different from the central Beacons where we spend most of our time.  Time to plan some more walks I think, but maybe looking at ones where we can come in from the east as that would be easier for us to get to.  We obviously have to walk straight up the Black Mountain as well at some point, but I feel like that would be a time when I wanted a good clear day.