Walking: Brynmawr to Crickhowell

I've been wanting to do some walks that basically involved me walking straight from my front door.  I was having a look at my OS Map, OL13, and saw that I could basically walk from here straight to Crickhowell.  Then I could just get the bus back home.  Unfortunately, I was too busy to do it on the day I had originally planned, so instead I did the walk a week later together with my husband.  I'm not going to lie, this walk wasn't my finest hour when it came to navigating as I didn't really bother concentrating on keeping to the route I had originally planned.  I wasn't hugely bothered as it was a pretty clear day and we were just out to enjoy ourselves, but it's not something I should really make a habit of doing as it could lead me into a dangerous situation.  In the future, I'll concentrate on practicing navigating and actually bother to use my compass as well.  It's not something I want to go rusty.

We started by walking up onto the road that leads to a footbridge at Braemar that crosses the Heads of the Valley road and then east along the new road alignment (not on our version of the OS Map) until we came to the stile that led us onto farmland and back onto the original route.  This bit was a nice gentle start to the walk and got us onto the commons pretty quickly.  The path on this side of the commons is small but still quite obvious - although I did still manage to take us slightly off track which led to me getting my feet very wet.  

Even though the route was supposed to lead us just below the peak of Twr Pen-cyrn, we decided we actually wanted to have a look at the Hen Dy-aderyn cairn at the top and so headed up that way instead.  After having a little nosey around, we headed down the other side and carried on towards the disused Llangattock quarries.  It wasn't immediately obvious which of the paths was the right one and, as I was being lazy on the navigation front, we did take a little detour before getting to the base of the quarry.  However, it was a clear day and the detour did mean we got a really good view of the valley below as well as the Black Mountains and Central Beacons.  We were also enjoying the fact that we were the only people up there - just us, a pretty strong wind, and some horses. 

The path that we were meant to take after the quarry turned out to be difficult to find (although we were able to find the other side) and I'm not into walking right past people's homes if I can help it, so we followed a vehicle track down which connected to the original path that took us along just below the escarpment.  We then followed the path that headed straight down to the bottom of the valley.  This bit was very steep, which would be fine if it wasn't for the fact that it was also quite slippery due to all the mud.  I slipped over a couple of times.  In fact, I was so busy concentrating on not slipping over that I completely forgot to take any photos of that section.  

The last section was pretty much just a road and then pavements through Llangattock and over the river to Crickhowell.  It was a little boring and it's never pleasant on your feet and legs to end your walk on pavements, but it did lead us to a lovely pint.  A very British way of ending a walk.

Despite the detours, this was an enjoyable walk with some pretty amazing views.  The slightly bleak weather made them all the more beautiful and I actually prefer that to sunny, clear days.  We're thinking of going back to the top of Twr Pen-cyrn, via the proper route this time, to have more of an exploration and really get to see what's up there.  We're also going to take a proper look at the Llangattock quarry which is apparently an actual tourist attraction.  However, next time I'll make sure I actually use my compass to properly navigate around.