wild camping
Final training and bivy in the Brecons
Well it has been a while since I managed to write something for the blog. Things have been slightly busy over the last two months. With work trips and weekends with friends. I’m currently writing this sat in my brothers flat in Tubingen, Germany, as it is only a couple of days now until we drive down to the Chamonix valley and see if the training has paid off!
Despite work being crazy busy this summer training for this years trip to the Alps has been going very well. Whilst mostly all I can do is run and try to keep the legs working, I have managed to get out into the hills to really try and test the fitness levels. Having
lived in Wales for the last 25 years I have experienced some wet weather, but I have not known anything like the conditions that I have found myself in whilst out in the Brecons this summer! It’s good to know that you have the right kit to keep you mostly dry when the weather does take a turn for the worse.
That said I have managed to experience at least 2 days of good weather whilst out in the Brecons. On that occasion things went rather the other way with temperatures soaring, I didn’t appreciate having to carry a 45lb pack up Pen-Fan over to Fan Y Big for my wild camp. It was completely worth it once I had set up camp to watch the stars come out and then in the morning t see the fog in the valley floor below with the peaks of the Brecons protruding through.
Finally, after a bit of a hiatus, spent a weekend sports climbing on some of the crags near to Cardiff. It had been a while since I have done any lead climbing outdoors. With my eye sight the way it is climbing outdoors is a somewhat tricky affair and so attempting to lead climb, albeit on a very easy grade, seriously tests the nerve. It was great to be back out on the cliffs though. Although we were only climbing up to 5C’s it’s amazing how different it is to climbing indoors where pushing your grade seems a much easier affair, especially when all of the holds for both your hands and feet are various shades of luminous colours. Outdoors that’s not the case, and so it can be very difficult at the best of times to find the best places to position your feet and your fingers to get up the climb. It is a great challenge though and very rewarding once you make it to the top, even if it can be stressful before you make it to the next bolt to clip yourself in!
Training for the Alps
Well it’s that time of year again, the annual migration to Chamonix for a spot of alpine climbing. Well, for some it’s that time anyway, for me this year the trip is coming later in the season in the hope that the weather will be somewhat more stable than it was last year.
Our trip last summer was a complete disaster. The weather and climbing conditions were so atrocious (and dangerous) many of the huts were closed for a prolonged period, including the week that we happened to be there. So our attempt to climb Mont Blanc had to be postponed until this year.
As this years trip will be in September I have the majority of the summer to get some serious training in. So far this year my “training” has been fairly casual, mainly just the odd walk out in the hills, the weekly climb at the local climbing centre and the rather rare run. These last few weeks though things have had to step up. With about 12 weeks to go until the attempt on Mont Blanc training has to take a significant step up!
This last weekend I managed to get some time to head out to the Brecon Beacons to give the legs a good work out and to test some new kit. The trip started in fantastic weather on the Friday evening, however that soon descended into intermittent heavy rain and strong winds on the Friday evening, thankfully clearing to give a relatively dry night and just an overcast Saturday morning. I hadn’t wild camped in the Pen y Fan area before, I’d been somewhat reluctant to camp in an area that is quite so heavily walked, but the need to get a lot of ascent in with out having to walk huge distances meant Pen y Fan was really the only decent place to go. The other perk to this area is that you can take public transport straight to the start of the walk. It is so frustrating to have to have a seriously long walk in from other public transport drop offs like Merthyr or Abergavenny. I realised on this trip that you can also use your bus pass (if you have one) which means that the trip is also free!
The three main peaks from the Story Arms car park going up Corn Du, Pen y Fan, Crybyn and Fan y Big makes for a really good training walk. In total the route comes in at around 1000m ascent which by my books is a good starting place for getting ready for the alps. The route provides no test of navigation but does burn the legs, especially if you decide to carry an expedition weight burgan. Was a good step change in the training regime for the summer though, and I think a few repetitions of Jacobs ladder would put anyone ion a good place ahead of a trip to the Alps.
So 12 weeks to go (ish) hopefully a lot more trips to the hills to come!
some pics from the trip below, these were shot just using my phone so not the best quality, but was the first time in a while that I’ve actually had a view from Pen y Fan, normally its covered in clouds when I’m up there!
First wild camp of the season
The weather has been pretty poor for camping so far this year, but last weekend I finally managed to get out for a hike and my first wild camp of the year. I have done a fair bit of camping and wild camping in the past but this was actually my first solo will camp. I have gotten to know the eastern fringe of the Brecon Beacon national park fairly well so firths year as it is one of the easiest places to get to by public transport. As I don’t drive, I’m completely reliant on public transport or blaging lifts off my partner or friends, so being able to just jump on the train and be in the hills fairly quickly is great.The only down side is that train stations are rarely at the start points of trails and so often you have a lengthy walk through the town before you can get to the hills. This time however I was quite lucky as I had been in the area walking with my partner (who does drive) during the day and so I didn’t have to rely on the public transport to get into the hills. Whilst the walk from Abergavenny to the hills isn’t too bad, once you have done it a few times it’s nice to skip out the hour or so walking on narrow lanes to jump straight into the proper hills.
As this was my first wild camp of the year, and first ever solo wild camp, I decided to go somewhere that I was familiar with. The eastern end of the Brecon Beacons provides loads of great places to set up a small camp for the night and so I decided to head North East from Abergavenny. I set off late with the old adage of set up late take down early in mind. The benefit of doing a late evening walk before camping is that you don’t have to bother carrying the added weight of a stove and pots for cooking. I had spent a nice hour or so at a local pub in Abergavenny with my partner getting nicely fed on some local cooking, s good as camp food is, it’s not pub grub! As I was only out for a single night my pack should have been fairly light but the punishment for doing landscape and astrophotography and solo wild camping is that you have to carry everything yourself, which always means a bag slightly heavier than you’d like.
After the essential pub grub and a quick stomp you very quickly get to some great views from Skirrid Fawr looking over towards the Welsh border to the East and back over towards Abergavenny and the Brecon Beacons to the East. This is a great spot for a bit of landscape photography, there are also some interesting rock formations to add some interesting foreground to your pictures. One of my plans for the evening was to attempt to produce a day to night time-lapse (this will be uploaded in a future post), as in this area you can get great views of the sun setting over the rolling country side whilst at the same time the street lights of Abergavenny starting to turn on. Fingers crossed this will turn out!
It had been a while since I last went wild camping in the UK but I quickly remembered why I love doing it. I was fortunate that the weather was great, a little windy and cloudy at times but the views of the sun setting, the stars and planets rising, the lights of the towns and villages in the valleys below, the cacophoney of bird song at both dawn and dusk it was awesome. I was also treated to a rathe rare sight of a stote walking to within two meters of where I stood talking photographs (sadly it was way to dark to get a picture of it!
Over the coming weeks I’m going to write some specific blog posts about what it’s like getting out int the hills and being partially sighted, what the specific things I have found difficult and the tricks I have found for getting around them. But for now here are some pics from the trip!
Blurred Adventure 