Walking in Wales

Back in May (sorry for the delay on all these posts, I’ll get better soon I promise!) we decided that we had to get into some of the camping action that gets massively hyped up here during summer, and headed to Wales for a weekend of walking. It also coincided with the Cooper’s Hill cheese roll festival – but more on that in a subsequent post!

We spent the first night in Cardiff checking out the sights and sounds with Adrian’s mate John and his girlfriend Jen. Those lovely girls in Cardiff sure aren’t too keen on wearing too many clothes that’s for sure! The next day we headed up to Brecon which is in the middle of the Brecon Beacons national park in the heart of south Wales. Adrian took inspiration from the Cardiff beauties and showed off his underwear as much as possible...


We started off with a quick walk around a reservoir practising our ‘off path’ skills (not getting too lost in the process fortunately) and then headed up into Brecon itself. The extremely friendly ladies in the tourist office helped us find a campsite for the next two nights (an eco-site walking distance from Brecon, excellent) and then we were back into the wilderness, checking out some waterfalls and sheep hangouts.


The following day it was the big one – the ‘Beacons Circuit’. This was an 18km circuit of the main summits and ridges of the central Brecon Beacons and was definitely deserved of the title ‘epic’ it was given on the map! Unfortunately Jen had to stay in Brecon to do a key changeover so their cat back in Cardiff didn’t starve for the weekend, but John, Adrian and I started off bright and eager at the first hurdle. The first climb was the biggest, right up to the summits of Corn Du (pronounced ‘Corn dee’) and Pen y Fan (pronounced ‘Pen ee van’), the latter being the highest mountain in southern Britain (886m). No Aoraki I know, but still made us puff!

After that it was a series of ups and downs that were killer on the knees and muscles to finally finish nearly six hours later. One of my boots has lost its waterproofing which led to me getting what Adrian lovingly referred to as 'trench foot' which was extremely attractive, and, as we’d brought raincoats and no sunblock, of course it was boiling hot and we got all sorts of terrible tan lines as well! I do have to say though, that night was one of the best sleeps I’d had in ages...

The rest of the photos are here. Check back for a post on the cheese roll!