A 3-day route around the hills of Cwm Tawe combined with a short one-off excursion to claim Craig y Llyn, one of our two remaining hills on the 600m Sims list. Yr Allt, the other Sim hill, is traversed on the main circuit.
The apparently popular approach to hill bagging where you drive a car as close as possible to the summit, claim the top and drive off again, is one that normally we thoroughly dislike. However there are a few cases where the technique fits quite well and Craig y Llyn, the historic county top of Glamorgan, is a case in point. It lies on the Coed Morgannwg Way trail (CMW) but this route did not appeal as a backpack. The hill is blighted by extensive forestry operations and a wind farm is under construction near the top, leaving the views from the northern edge as its only merit.
A return to the Brecon Beacons was long overdue and we designed the Tawe route to include our first lakeside exploration of Llyn y Fan Fawr, approaching from the east and taking in Moel Feity, another new Dewey 500m top.
With a forecast of hot sunny weather following an already dry spell, and given the limestone geology of this area where streams can disappear underground, we predicted problems maintaining water levels and took our Platypus water container to supplement our usual bottles – how right we were.
A very nice few days. A lovely walking area.
Hi Alan, another enjoyable outing despite the heat. It is a fine hiking area with some unexplored regions to put on our list for the future.
Great route Geoff around some hills I know well. A couple of good sites for a pitch as well. Fan Gyhirych is on my list for a summit camp this weekend. Did you collect water from any of the streams that run from the summit or bring it up from lower down. The hills down here are pretty dry so its guesswork as to which streams a running and which aren’t. Every time I’ve been up there its been winter when the whole area is incredibly wet but no idea if its dried out. Be useful if I don’t have to carry water up from the start
Thanks Andy, the circuit worked well from Crai.
I saw those convenient streams on the map, but after this long dry spell I didn’t trust them to be flowing high up, (I’ve no idea if they were or not, I couldn’t tell from a distance but very probably not, at least anywhere near the summit). We collected water in the deep rough ravine of the Nant Byfre around SN867167.