Pen y Fan, the top of South Wales, is a pretty popular climb, but seemingly rather less so from the north – even the little carpark above Brecon had plenty of room on a sunny Saturday, and there was no-one bar a couple of mountainbikers to be seen on the contouring route along back-lanes and over fields to the foot of Cribyn’s north ridge. From here, with winds gusting across the tops, I made a late call to forsake a planned route straight up the steep nose of the hill (it actually looked a perfectly manageable stepped path from above later, but discretion tends to rule these days…) – the bridleway up Cwm Cynwyn to the col is a very gentle fast-going alternative.
- Allt Ddu from Cwmgwdi
- Cwm Cynwyn
- Cribyn
- The Neuadd Reservoirs
People start to gather (although it’s still hardly Snowdon) from there on the well-made stepped-paths up to and over Cribyn and on to Pen y Fan, with great views from this side of their steep eastern, typically-Beacons, ‘clawed’ faces. These hills are almost geometric in their sharp-angled aspects – Pen y Fan and Corn Du square topped above almost perpendicular rises, Cribyn (with steep drops on all sides bar the gentle south ridge) looking a ‘perfect mountain’ triangle from the north and west. Plenty of people on top of Pen y Fan, but justly so – it’s a great place to be! Just a slight shame to see that in the two years since I was last there someone had thought it worthwhile to smash up the trig-point – they’re only little blocks of stone (although there are times on a bad day on a bad hill when stumbling on one seems like reaching the promised land) but quite what anyone gains from that is a mystery…
- Fan y Big
- Corn Du and Pen y Fan from Cribyn
- Pen y Fan again from the head of Cwm Sere
- Back to Cribyn
- The parallel NE ridges of the Beacons
- Down onto Cefn Cwm Llwch, Pen y Fan's north ridge
After an initially-steep clamber down, the north ridge of Cefn Cwm Llwch makes for an easy descent. Great views back to the summit – looking especially dramatic from this angle – and a great walk, but perhaps still not quite as perfect a route to these two tops as the southern horseshoe from the Neuadd Reservoirs.
- Cribyn, Waun Rydd behind
- Hazily over Llyn Cwm Llwch to the Fforest Fawr & Black Mountain
- Views back to Pen y Fan from the north ridge
- The descent path steepening into Cwmgwdi
Craig Cerrig-Gleisiad, a peak looking quite unlike anything else in the Beacons with its striking green northern crags, is a much-underrated little route – packing plenty of interest, a fair bit of challenge, and two Hewitt summits into an hour’s walk.
There’s no denying that the route up is hard though, extremely steep in places and – across little more than rough steps worn into a muddy cliff-face – tough enough in good conditions, definitely to be avoided if wet or icy underfoot. The flipside is that you’re close to the summit from the roadside in barely minutes, and it’s easy all the way from there. A nice switchback takes you close to Fan Frynych (in truth, the short moorland detour to the summit adds little to this walk, but it seems almost churlish not to take it in for the sake of ten minutes – and here’s the pristine trig that Pen y Fan has been robbed of…), and then an off-map but very clear path finds a way back down the cliffs via the lushly-vegetated cwm.
- Craig Cerrig-Gleisiad from the start of the ascent
- North over Glyn Tarell
- Pen y Fan & Corn Du
- Looking from the clifftop across the cwm to Fan Frynych
- Back to Craig Cerrig-Gleisiad
- North from Fan Frynych summit
- Craig Cerrig-Gleisiad during the descent
- The steep ridge of ascent to CCG
Photos – perhaps due to its always-shaded situation – don’t really do justice to this area, but it’s stunningly beautiful, a great companion to any of the barer ridge walks in the Beacons.
