Pen-y-Fan, Powys - Top of the Range

Brecon is well connected to the rest of Wales by bus. The end of the walk at Libanus on the A470 is served by regular services between Merthyr and Brecon (for timetable information, go to the Traveline Cymru website, or phone 0871 200 22 33). Libanus is also a stop for the walker-friendly Beacons Buses (Summer Sundays and Bank Holidays from the beginning of June to the end of September; timetables at www.travelbreconbeacons.info). 

From the time of the Hundred Years’ War in the fourteenth century, successive British monarchs developed a system of early warning fires to alert the country of imminent invasion. In South Wales, the pivotal point of this network, visible across fifteen shires, was the anvil-topped peak rising to the south of Brecon: Pen-y-Fan.

Over time, the beacon leant its name to the entire range of hills extending to either side of it. Stretching from the Herefordshire border to the hinterland of Carmarthen, the “Brecon Beacons” actually comprise four separate massifs, distinguished by their angular, northwest-facing scarps of Old Red Sandstone. At 886m/2906ft, Pen-y-Fan is the loftiest of the line – and the highest summit in Britain south of Snowdon.

Lying within easy reach of the Welsh valleys and the Cardiff-Newport conurbation, the mountain serves as a much loved escape for around 120,000 town and city dwellers each year, the majority of whom start their ascent from the Storey Arms car park on the A470, at the pass where the road crosses the Beacons’ watershed. This heavily eroded approach, however, holds less interest than others tackling Pen-y-Fan from the north.

On the Brecon side, five bare, grassy ridges taper in parallel from the main summit ridge, spreading like fingers towards the Vale of Usk’s fertile patchwork far below. As you gain altitude, ever more spectacular views open up of the glaciated valleys below them, and even confirmed mountaineers cannot fail to be impressed by the first glimpse of Craig Cwm Sere – the 120-metre/400-foot triangle of near-vertical strata and grass ledges crumbling beneath Pen-y-Fan’s summit.

The route we’ve devised splices together the most dramatic views the massif has to offer, in a linear walk starting either in Brecon or, if you jump in a taxi, the foot of the mountain itself. It’s long and physically challenging day’s walk. But in good weather, when the cloud base is well clear of the summits, assures a close encounter with a line of peaks possessing a much wilder, higher feel than their vital statistics might suggest.

It’s a good ninety-minute, mostly uphill plod, from the centre of Brecon to Cwmcynwyn, where the country lanes yield to open mountainside. Given an early enough start and sufficient fitness you can cover the full distance on foot, following the route description below, but this makes for a long, hard day. You might prefer to shorten the walk and take a taxi from Brecon market square for the 6 km/3.5 mile trip to Cwmcynwyn and pick up the walk from [2]. Whichever way you begin the route, be sure to check timings for the bus from Libanus at the other end (see "Getting There").

[1] From the Bulwark in the centre of Brecon town, walk down Ship Street and across the bridge over the Usk. Turn first left at the far side onto Dinas Rd, past a pay-and-display car park on your left, and keep going until the lane forks. Bear right here through a wrought-iron gate marked “Private Drive Public Footpath Only”, and continue for 5 minutes down this track along the side of Christ College playing fields. Where the lane starts to bend sharply left, head straight on through a pair of stone gate posts, turning left onto a tarmac lane that rises steeply uphill. Follow this lane across the bridge over the bypass to begin a steady, steep climb. After 5 minutes, the lane wings sharply right to Pen-y-Lan farm; do not follow the tarmac, but instead continue straight ahead on an old unsurfaced track.  The gradient eases as you crest the hill 15 minutes later, from where you’ll be rewarded with your first glimpse of Pen-y-Fan and Cribyn. After a short descent, follow the lane ahead past Tir-y-groes cottage on your right, ignoring the waymarked path on the left. Keep dropping down the lane until it makes a 90-degree bend at Tylebrithos. Just after the bend, a stile on your right, marked with a fingerpost hidden in the hedge, leads to a path skirting a barbed wire fence. Follow this to a second stile, then keep to the right field border, crossing two more stiles to reach a metal gate and final stile where you rejoin the lane.

Cross the lane junction to head straight on, over the stream and up a rise past Pontbrengarreg farm. Bearing left at the fork just beyond the farm, you should cross a stone bridge and turn right immediately after it. After about 500m you arrive at Tir-ciw farm on the right, and a five-bar gate where the lane turns into a rough, stony track.  Keep ahead up this track, turning right then left at an S-bend just beyond the midway point. After 15–20 minutes you’ll reach a gate where the path joins the lane end at Cwncynwyn.

[2] Having reached the head of the lane, follow the tree-lined track up the hill (possibly the remains of a Roman road over the Beacons). At the gate onto access land, instead of keeping to the track cutting along the left border of the field, follow the clear trail rising up through the bracken to your right up the ridge line of Bryn Teg.

(A) Bryn Teg  means “Beautiful Hill” and leads you up to the knife edge, northwest ridge of Cribyn (795m/2608ft).

After a steady but strenuous climb, the path gains the spine of the hill, levelling off momentarily before the final assault on Cribyn (795m/2608ft), whose summit is reached by means of a steep eroded path requiring simple hand holds. From Cribyn, descend right (WSW) down the ridge to a saddle pass, from where a well-made path strikes up the lip of Craig Cwm Sere to the summit of Pen-y-Fan (886m/2907ft).

(B) Craig Cwm Sere, between Cribyn and Pen Y Fan, was the scene of a World War II tragedy when a Spitfire went missing for almost nine months before being found wrecked at the bottom of Cwm Sere.

(C) Pen y Fan is the highest peak in South Wales and the highest peak in Britain south of the Snowdonia mountain range. The twin summits of Pen y Fan and Corn Du were formerly referred to as Cadair Arthur or 'Arthur's Seat'.

[3] Head SW off the summit plateau, keeping to the path on the very edge of the ridge falling to your right. This drops to a second saddle and then rises briefly to reach the top of Corn Du (873m/2864ft).  Getting onto the Craig Cwm Llwch ridge from here can be tricky if the mist has closed in: look for a notch in the edge of the summit plateau of Corn Du, only 10-15m/30-45ft SW of the cairn, from where the rocky path descends steeply to the ridge. In poor visibility, it’s easy to be drawn SW along the much more obvious, paved route running down to Bwlch Duwynt. After the steep initial descent down the Cwm Llwch ridge, ignore the path peeling left at the 760m contour, and continue instead downhill past the Tommy Jones memorial on your left.  

(D) The Tommy Jones Memorial obelisk commemorates a five-year-old boy who became separated from his family and died on the mountain over a hundred years ago. A useful landmark in poor conditions, it was erected by voluntary subscriptions. The jurors at the inquest donated their fees after determining that he had died from exhaustion and exposure.

From the obelisk, keep to the path closest to the cliff edge as it swings north around the head of Cwm Llwch, and then bears right above the lake. At SN999220, you’ll reach a prominent fork. Take the left branch to follow a well worn route that runs all the way down the valley to Cwm Llwch Farm.

[4] Cross two stiles to the left of the farm, and follow the path as it skirts the buildings to join a broad track. This winds alongside the Nant Cwm Llwch stream a short way to Login (look for a modern barn through the trees on your right), where it crosses a tributary stream by means of a footbridge. Continue on the main track for a couple of minutes, but bear left when you reach a fork, up a short rise to a field with a small wood on your left. Keep heading along the left edge of the field, over two stiles and down to a pair of cottages, which the footpath skirts to the right, as indicated. A stile in the bottom of the next field (a little to the right of its bottom left corner) leads to another small field and, after a couple of minutes, to a second group of cottages (marked “Clwydwaunhir” on OS maps), which you pass through the middle of via a track, turning right to pass through a gate and onwards down the driveway. 

[5] The driveway arrives soon after at a tarmac lane, where you turn right, then immediately left. Follow the winding lane N, bearing left at the fork soon after, then left again when you’ve dropped down to Libanus Mill to cross the river over an old stone bridge. The main A470 and bus stop lie a couple of minutes further up the lane at Libanus village, where buses stop for Brecon. 

The distinctive appearance of the Brecon Beacon range, with its text-book scarp-and-dip-slope profiles and table-top summits, derives from the durability of Old Red Sandstone. Formed three hundred million years ago when the area lay under a huge marine estuary, this pinkish rock was created after mud and sand from the seabed was compressed and forced upwards, to be sliced and moulded by glaciers.

Few landscapes in Britain exemplify more vividly the action of glacial ice than do the four cwms, or cirques, that scallop the northwest flanks of Pen-y-Fan. As they retreated, the ice fields scooped massive bowls from the mountainsides, revealing cross-sections of their geological fillings – the trademark strata that bands the Beacons’ exposed crags. The hardest rocks of all, known as “plateau beds”, rest on the topmost layers, which is why the summits tend to be flat. More resistant to erosion, the plateaux have remained largely intact while the slopes below them are gashed by landslips and run-off gullies.

The combination of dramatic, smooth sided valleys and steep dividing ridges on the north side of the Pen-y-Fan massif makes for superb walking. Bryn Teg – “Beautiful Hill” – is the most elegant of these spurs, not least because it scythes straight up the mountain to meet the knife edge, northwest ridge of Cribyn (795m/2608ft). Walkers approaching this pyramid for the first time are sometimes intimidated by its culminating step, but the path ascends it easily via a natural rock staircase that’s not nearly as exposed as it looks from a distance.

From the top of Cribyn, the magnificent view south over the heads of the Welsh Valleys to the distant Bristol Channel is revealed for the first time. But it’s the northwest face of Pen-y-Fan – formidable Craig Cwm Sere – which tends to steal the show at this stage, as you drop to the pass dividing the two peaks.

The cliff was the scene of a tragedy in World War II, when a spitfire pilot crashed into a gully only 25m/80ft below the ridge top. The wreckage wasn’t found for almost nine months, making it the longest missing plane to have disappeared over land in the entire war. With a pair of binoculars, you can pick out fragments of the aircraft at the bottom of Cwm Sere’s main gully.

Old maps mark a trig point on the summit plateau of Pen-y-Fan itself. But this was removed in 1990-91 by archaeologists excavating the Middle Bronze Age cairn below it, which was being gradually destroyed by walkers. The excavations revealed cremated human remains in stone cists, along with fragments of pottery and bronze. These mountain top locations were obviously of great ritual important to the Bronze Age people of the area, and cremation burials were also found on Fan y Big and on Pen-y-Fan’s sister peak Corn Du – the “Black Horn”. Interestingly, although the climate was warmer and drier in the Bronze Age, peat had already formed on the summits before the burial mounds were constructed, and was found perfectly preserved in the excavations, with vegetation including species such as starmoss, bilberry and cotton grass.

The “Fan Dance” - Military selection tests don’t come much tougher than the one undertaken by would-be recruits to the SAS (based 34miles north of Brecon at Credenhill Camp), the centrepiece of which is a gruelling 24-km/15-mile out-and-back yomp over the Pen-y-Fan massif carrying a 35lb backpack. For any soldiers able to complete the so-called “Fan Dance” in less than four hours, a still more agonizing ordeal awaits in the form of the “Long Drag”, covering a 64-km/40-mile route with a back-breaking 55lb sack over the same ground.

The Tommy Jones Tragedy - Pen-y-Fan’s fickle weather has inflicted many losses over the years – none of them more poignant than that of five-year old Tommy Jones, a farmer’s son from the Rhondda Valley who perished on the mountain in 1900. Tommy had become separated from his father and cousin while walking from Brecon to his grandparents’ farm at the bottom of Cwm Llwch on a summer’s evening. Quite how this happened remains a mystery, as do the circumstances that led to his eventual death, high on the ridge just shy of the summit of Corn Du.

For 29 days following the disappearance, rescuers scoured the valley for traces of the boy. in the end it was a gardener’s wife from north of Brecon who located his body slumped in the bracken, after its whereabouts had been revealed to her in a dream. The obelisk erected on the spot stands as a memorial both to the extraordinary stamina of the lad – who, already tired and hungry after a long walk from Brecon, somehow managed to climb two miles up 1300ft of mountain in the dark – as well as to the treacherous nature of Pen-y-Fan itself, a hill deserving of more respect than its benign appearance sometimes suggests. 

Terrain: Mostly clear paths over grassy mountainsides, with some short, steep and rocky sections below the summits requiring an easy scramble. The walk in from Brecon follows mostly unsurfaced tracks, pasture, and some sections of quiet lanes. Views over the Vale of Usk to mid-Wales to Shropshire, and south across the Bristol channel to Exmoor; spectacular high mountain terrain. The summit draws big crowds of walkers on summer weekends.

Maps: OS Explorer OL12.

Visitor Information: Brecon Tourist Information Centre, Cattle Market Car Park, Brecon (tel 01874 622485).
National Park Visitor Centre (Mountain Centre) Libanus (SN977262,2 km west of Libanus) (tel 01874 623366 www.breconbeacons.org). The main web site for the National Park includes a handy round-up of public transport routes.
Detailed, walker-oriented forecast for the mountains: www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/mountain-forecast/ 
Walks programmes and special events in the Beacons: www.breconbeaconsparksociety.org
Brecon Jazz festival is normally on the first weekend in August. 

Eating & Drinking: Pubs in Libanus and Brecon, The National Park Visitor Centre (Mountain Centre).

Sleeping: Brecon, Libanus, Llwyn y Celyn YHA.

This route originally appeared as route number 46 in Walk Britain - Great Views in 2009 and was checked at that time by Merthyr Valley Ramblers.