The Great Outdoors Spring 2019

Cribyn & N escarpment

from Pen y Fan

100 The Great Outdoors Spring 2019

housed Crickhowell’s landmark
hill fort – was also prominent,
but any gap year travellers who
had already ticked of Cape
Town and Rio de Janeiro might
suddenly feel confused.
Talybont Reservoir
shimmered like a Norwegian
jord and lines of grey scree
met pea-green bracken above
the dark marshy wetlands at
Abercynafon. he far end of the
silvery water was an impossible
aquamarine blue but the east-
facing slopes below Allt Lwyd
and Waun Rydd were already
lost in dark shadow.
A track to the south of Tor
y Foel contoured above the
reservoir and I forked let onto
the line of an old horse-drawn
railway. he Brinore tramroad,
operational between 1815 and
1865, played a key role in the
industrialisation of the South
Wales valleys, and provided

an important link between

the canal, remote limestone

quarries and the former

Tredegar ironworks near Ebbw

Vale. Today, the quarries are

gaunt scars on the high moors

and I looked south over the

head of Dyfryn Crawnon

to a lunar landscape of clifs,

terraces and odd rusting

remnants.

I let the tramroad and

tumbled through trees to the

foot of the valley. Dyfryn

Crawnon, which translates as

‘the valley of the garlic river’,

was a secret mountain cul-de-

sac and just a couple of farms

nestled by the narrow lane. he

welcome sound of running

water encouraged me to stop,

and grey wagtails litted from

rock to rock as I drank my ill

and munched on a soggy pasty.

he track up through the

dank forest in Cwm Pyrgad was

hot, sweaty work and I gasped

for fresh air when I inally

reached the open hillside by the

top of a sharp gully known as

Darren Ddu.

Bumpy limestone,

pitted with shake holes and

intermittent pavements, now

stretched in every direction.

he evening sun streamed

over the ridges to the south

of Pen y Fan and a faint path

twisted over a low escarpment

to the crest of Clo Cadno. An

ancient chambered cairn was

a reminder that people were

living up here long before any

blast furnaces belched swathes

of smoke.

hankfully, everything is

now quiet again and the 6km

amble back to Llangynidr –

downhill all the way over more

crags and through woodpecker

woodland – was a perfect way

to end the day.

Further information

Maps: OS Explorer

1:25,000 sheets OL12

(Brecon Beacons National Park,

Western area) and OL13

(Eastern area)

Transport: Stagecoach

service 43 runs from

Abergavenny to Brecon via

Llangynidr. Details from

stagecoachbus.com/about/

south-wales.

i

Information: Brecon TIC,

01874 622485

[Captions clockwise from top]

Looking north over the valley

of the River Usk with the Black

Mountains in the distance; View

south-west from Tor y Foel

to the south end of Talybont

Reservoir; Evening sunlight

below the crags of Clo Cadno,

looking north across Dyffryn

Crawnon to Tor y Foel with

Mynydd Troed in the distance