Beacons Way, day 5: Storey Arms to Craig y Nos

Another cloudless day, another trip on the TrawsCymru T6 bus from Swansea to Brecon, followed after a break by the T4 to Storey Arms.  This time I’m on the other side of the A470 from Pen y Fan.  I’ve always wanted to explore the unfashionable west slopes above Storey Arms, and now’s my chance.  My assumption has always been that few, if any, people give it a try.  But today the path, though not crowded, is certainly not empty.

The ascent up the hill is a kindly one.  The path moves north, almost in parallel with the road down towards Brecon, and on a gentle diagonal.  It’s been so dry that the various streams flowing across the path from the left don’t provide any barrier.

Looking back, I can see the summits of Pen y Fan and Corn Du, stark against the blue horizon, and feel glad I’ve left their busyness behind.  Above me are a couple of people on the Cambrian Way, making for the empty country directly west, but I’m heading north-west.  Eventually I overtake a family with two young children, having a rest on the path side.  They ask me, ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ and I reply cheerfully: they’ve done most of the climbing, but not all the walking, to gain the views they seek over Craig Cerrig Gleisiad.

By now the road noise has subsided, and given way to the songs of skylarks (the Beacons are still one of their strongholds).  After a while the path leaves the crags and turns west, towards Cefn Perfedd.  I wait for a couple of walkers to move on before striking out.  The grass underfoot is springy, and you seem to need little effort to keep a steady pace, even uphill.  I’m now heading south, to the top of Fan Dringarth, where there are long views to the north (Breconshire north of Brecon) and south to windmill country.

Then south again, on a long, slow climb to the next summit, Fan Llia.  Ahead I can see a refugee-like procession of young people in groups.  They turn out to be Duke of Edinburgh Award aspirants, and these ones seem a bit less despondent than those of last week, as if they’d chosen the task freely.  Way off to the west I can see the dramatic shapes of the Breconshire and Carmarthenshire Fans, tomorrow’s challenge.

I meet a woman sitting and eating her lunch.  She turns out to be a volunteer for the Eryri National Park, on holiday here to bag more peaks, and we exchange experiences.  She says it’s half-term in English schools, which is why the ‘DoE’s, as she calls them, are out in force.  She points to something I’d not noticed, a long, horizontal drift of smoke far to the north: the sign of yet another upland fire after the long spell of dry weather.  I say I have to take my grandson up Yr Wyddfa soon, and ask her which route would be best to avoid the crowds: she suggests the Snowdon Ranger and Rhyd Ddu paths.

The top of Fan Llia, with its fine views, is a good place to stop and eat my sandwiches before tackling the long gradual descent, still southward, off the mountain.  At first there’s an obvious path, but towards the end it disappears, and I’m left picking my way through occasionally boggy patches of rush and sedge, to a forest edge. 

At the bottom a bridge crosses the river, and the path follows the road up alongside Afon Llia before turning off through forestry.  Some trees are living, others demolished and splintered, as if on a First World War battlefield.  I’ve been in this place before.  There’s a Roman marching camp nearby, but I’ve no more success than before in working out where it lies.  I’m treading a Roman road, one of the many in Wales labelled ‘Sarn Helen’.  When the forestry ends, a tall vertical stone, carefully worked and inscribed, suddenly appears on the left of the track.  This is Maen Madoc, a memorial for Dervacus, son of Justus, a local notable in the sixth or seventh century – evidence that Roman roads continued to be used for centuries after the Romans left Wales.  The track, stony and hard to walk on (did the Romans have harder soles on their feet than we do?), moves south-west in long, straight sections, until it reaches and fords Afon Nedd Fechan.

Things now change dramatically.  Sandstone has given way to limestone, and the landscape looks very different, as I start ascending again towards the north-west.  At last I’ve reached a section of the Beacons Way completely empty of other people.  The moon is out, and this country has a lunar, otherworldly quality.  I’m climbing on a slightly sloping upland plateau, dotted with sinkholes, occasional limestone outcrops, and ‘pillow mounds’ or rabbit warrens (rabbits were bred on a large scale here in the nineteenth century).

By now I’m beginning to feel remote, geographically and mentally.  Distant landmarks still exist, and the darkest of dark forests looms in a line to my right.  But the limestone plateau seems to exist apart, and to go on for ever, getting steadily higher.  Finally, I reach the top.  I pass through a gate and find myself in a hillier area, the Ogof Ffynnon Ddu nature reserve.  Here I become aware that the sinkholes, outcrops and paths above ground have their invisible equivalents below the surface, in Wales’s most spectacular cave system.

The rest of the walk is downhill, along broad green tracks, and my speeds increase.  I cross the grassed-over track of the old Neath and Brecon Railway, passing limestone pavements sheltering rare plants, and reach Penwyllt, with its quarry and old railway station (called ‘Craig y Nos’, it was funded by Adelina Patti and contained her private waiting room).  By now I’m back on tarmac, and follow a minor road downhill.  Avoiding the path that turns off to Craig y Nos, I continue on the road, and then a bridleway, to Penycae and my bed for the night: an extra couple of miles added on to an already long-seeming day’s walk.

I’m tired by the time I reach the Penycae Inn.  The going has been easy today, but I still feel physically tested, and in need of a rest.  But the Inn is closed for meals tonight, so I have to take an evening stroll down the main road to the Ancient Briton, past Ty’n y Coed, the (closed) handsome square chapel outside Ynyswen.  Its graveyard memorials are surrounded by a sea of primroses.