#43.Brecon Beacon's.3-9-11.

13 month's after completing my Welsh Nuttall's my great friend Howard Smith was set to complete them with his final 4 in the Brecon Beacon's.After putting the walk on the Walking Forum and a few personal messages we managed to assemble 19 hardy walker's to celebrate his completion.The weather forecast was not very encouraging,cloudy and dry morning with rain in the afternoon but im glad to say nobody was put off and we assembled at the Storey Arm's car park on a bleak saturday morning.Everybody suited and booted most left their rucksack's in their car's as the first mountain of the day was a there and back ascent of Y Gyrn.

That's Fan Fawr in the distance,our second mountain we were to climb today.

Looking down the Taf Valley to the Beacon's Reservoir.

Y Gyrn is only 1 mile from the car park with a 600 foot ascent,this is it's summit.

We returned to the car park and grabbed our bag's and started the ascent of Fan Fawr.

Frequent stop's were taken on it's steep ascent as we gained 1,000 feet in 1 mile to reach it's summit.

The final 100 metres saw us enter the cloud line and it started to rain.We didn't get any view's until we descended the final mountain and it didn't stop raining all day.Summit photo below.

We had a 2 mile bog trot now to reach Craig Cerrig-gleisiad,it's tiny summit hard to find in the mist.

The team now started to string out and i couldn't keep tabs on the front marker's and they started heading in the wrong direction toward's Nant Cwm Du.Realising we were going the wrong way i mentioned to Julian that we were following the wrong fence and he had seen the gate we should have passed through so we doubled back to it and were soon back on track,no harm done and less then 1 mile was walked in the wrong direction.The final step's to the summit of Fan Frynych and Howie's 190th and last Nuttall saw the team form a guard of honour for him to pass through.

By now we were all hungry so descended a little way to try to find some shelter to have our dinner.Me,Howie and Julian had brought champagne to celebrate his achievement.

We now walked down to the A470 which we crossed and made for the drover's road which we followed for 1.5 miles back to the car.Heading for the Afon Taf.

After changing at the car's we headed to the Tai'r Bull in Libanus for a celebratory drink.

Today's soggy walk came in at 9 mile with 2,500 feet of ascent.





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