I’d long wanted to visit the high peaks of Bannau Brycheiniog and survey them, and doing so was long overdue. Revisiting them was always a pleasure, especially after time between visits being many years. It was a clichéd expression to say that it was like visiting old friends, but that was exactly how it felt. Although the hills were inanimate objects, they had an uncanny presence that could form characteristics seemingly all their own.
As well as wanting to visit the higher peaks, there was one particular hill that I was interested in, Craig Gwaun Taf, an outlier of Corn Du that thrust upward on its southerly ridge beyond Bwlch Duwynt. This hill and many others had recently been checked against Lidar data by Joe Nuttall, who was the son of John and Anne Nuttall, guidebook authors and list compilers for the 2000ft hills of both England and Wales, hills that had kept me busy for many a year.
Lidar produced highly accurate height data that was freely available for much of Wales, and Joe had been diligently checking a number of hills for qualification for his parents’ hill list. Joe had found that Lidar data gave Craig Gwaun Taf a drop of 15.78m, so he had contacted me and asked if I could use my Trimble equipment to survey the hill. By doing so it would give a comparison for this hill between Lidar data and Trimble data, and would confirm the hill’s drop value and status.
I set off from the car park at the top of the A470 opposite the Storey Arms at 8.50am, having driven from Worcester, the first time I had ventured into Wales for a hill walk from the recesses of this part of deepest, darkest England. Although the forecast was for settled, dry conditions with little breeze, the cloud base was low and a murky greyness pervaded the hills.
I’d only been on the path from Pont ar Daf to Pen y Fan a couple of times before, once when cycling and pushing mountain bikes to its summit in 1990 during a ten-day expedition mountain-biking the hill boundary of Powys. On that day it was progressively getting hotter, which was a contrast to today, where when height was gained, a slight chill pervaded the wisps of mist as they gently rolled through the land.
By the time I arrived at Bwlch Duwynt, the pass between Corn Du and Craig Gwaun Taf, one person had overtaken me and a few people had headed down the hill after making an early-morning ascent. All were either heading toward or coming from Pen y Fan, leaving Craig Gwaun Taf quietly forgotten in the mist, which suited me fine. The critical bwlch consisted of an elongated, shallow, muddy puddle which stretched over the bwlch from the valley-to-valley direction. I checked the ten-figure grid reference for the bwlch that Joe had given me and collected four data sets to give a good value for the height of the bwlch.
As I left the summit of Craig Gwaun Taf, a number of voices cast from the mist had drifted my way in the slight breeze. By the time I reached the path toward Pen y Fan, a multitude of people were heading in all directions, some downward, others up towards Corn Du and more toward Pen y Fan. I suspected the summit of the highest mountain in south Wales might be a little busy.
The summit of Pen y Fan once had a trig pillar at its high point, but now it had a constructed cairn with an embedded stone marker giving the hill’s name and height. It also had many visitors who thronged to its summit in all weather.
When I arrived I wondered how on earth I was going to keep so many people away from the high point while the Trimble receiver was gathering its all-important summit data. Surprisingly, this proved relatively easy and I only had to explain to a few people what I wanted to do. All were extremely compliant with the wants of a mountain-surveying, Trimbling person. Having gathered data at the top of the solid cairn, I wanted another five-minute data set at the highest land at the periphery of the cairn. This again proved relatively easy to obtain.
Leaving the throng of people beside the summit of Pen y Fan, I backtracked to its connecting bwlch with Corn Du. The position of this bwlch proved easy to identify, and within a few minutes the Trimble was balanced over the northern precipice gathering data.
My next objective was Corn Du and I hoped that its summit would give a little peace and quiet compared to that of Pen y Fan. However, another multitude of people were gathered around its constructed cairn. This summit also proved relatively easy to survey, as everyone gathered around its periphery, giving the Trimble time and space to gather its data.
Before heading down I wanted another five-minute data set from the highest natural ground remaining on the hill. I judged this to be one of the small grass hummocks on the edge of its steep northerly drop, I placed the Trimble on it and secured it in place with a few small rocks before pressing the Log button and hoping that it wouldn’t fancy a quick descent to the cwm 300m below.
Once the Trimble was salvaged from its precarious position, I plodded down in continuing mist, following the broad path to the obelisk commemorating Tommy Jones, who at the age of five lost his way from Cwm-llwch farm and whose body was found on this spot 29 days later. I knew that a path went from near this obelisk toward the bwlch and then the summit of my last hill of the day, Y Gurn. After gathering data at the critical bwlch of Y Gurn, I followed a good path to its summit and placed the Trimble beside the small cairn atop a peat-hagged hummock. Once the customary five minutes of data were gathered, I followed the path and fence-line down to connect with the main path from the Storey Arms to Pen y Fan.
There were many people on this main path, with the majority heading down to the Storey Arms, but some were heading up in brightening conditions, with glimmers of the higher peaks tantalisingly on show as their straight-edged ridges gleamed out of the cloud. I had done what I set out to do and collected data from the highest hills in south Wales. However, my timing had not been good weatherwise.
Only one survey remained and that was for the critical bwlch of Fan Fawr, which proved to be adjacent to the car park opposite the Storey Arms. This was on ground next to a ditch which I concluded was probably man-made for drainage. I chose a spot that was conveniently on solid ground above the ditch beside one of the duck-boards laid across it. After five minutes of data had been collected I headed back to my car happy in the knowledge that fifteen surveys had been conducted and that the status of Craig Gwaun Taf would be finally determined. Its drop turned out to be 16.1m so its new status was confirmed.
