Pumlumon Fawr and Pen Pumlumon Llygad-bychan

Sunday 27 October 2019

The plan today was to meet up with a friend of Vince’s and do a couple of summits in the Pumlumon range. We checked out of the Wynnstay Arms and made the 45 minute journey to the little car park at Eisteddfa Gurig where we rendezvoused with Laura. The weather was dry and sunny, in contrast to the deluge we endured in 2016 when we first did all five Nuttalls in this range.

We set off at 09:40 and followed the track/path beside the Afon Tarennig passed some disused mine workings, and then continued more steeply to the summit of Pumlumen Fawr. Some nice clear views from the top.

The next summit, Pen Pumlumon Llygad-bychan, was only a kilometre away. It was simply a matter of following a fence in an ENE direction down to a col and then on to the summit.

These were the only two tops we intended to do today, so we now began the return journey by retracing our steps back to Pumlumon Fawr. Rather than return by exactly the same route we now followed the fence over Pen y Drawsallt, skirted around the forest and then on a track that led us back to the car park.

As this is being written up nearly two years after the event, my memory of this walk is very sketchy, so I have not put as much detail as I would normally. I cannot remember where we stopped for food breaks for example. I do remember (with Vince’s prompting) that at some point on the walk Laura produced a cake form her rucksack which went down very well.

	Summit	Height (m)		Status
	Pumlumon Fawr	752		Hewitt, Marilyn, Nuttall
	Pen Pumlumon Llygad-bychan	727		Hewitt, Nuttall

Photos of both day’s walks here

Micro Navigation Practice in the Elan Valley

Saturday 26 October 2019

I never did get around to writing up this trip at the time. This is being written nearly two years after the event, so will only be fairly brief notes of the weekend.

Vince and Jack came to mine on the Friday afternoon and we travelled in my car to the Wynnstay Arms in Llanbrynmair. I cannot remember what the journey was like, but we were probably delayed; we always are.

As per the forecast, the weather was pretty grim when we awoke on Saturday morning. What we had planned to do escapes me, but we abandoned any thoughts of high summits and decided to head south into the beautiful Elan Valley for a fairly low level walk. A car journey of some 35 miles taking around about an hour.

It was just before 11 o’clock when we began walking, firstly a kilometre of road walking before heading up a track/path towards Cefn Bach. I think we were probably just making up the walk as we went along. We headed for various spot heights on the map that had no distinguishing features - so it turned into an exercise in micro-navigation using compass and pace counting in the rain and mist.

 

After visiting the 461m spot height at SN906736 we headed east on a path over Cefn Bach and Cerrig Llwydion for 1km. Leaving this path we turned right and paced south-west a couple of hundred metres to locate the 508m spot height that was the summit of Moel Geufron. This was in fact marked with a short concrete pillar.

Retracing our steps back to the track, we continued on it for a further 500m or so before striking off left to the 495m spot height on Lan wen. Back on the track we continued just a bit further to meet a bridle path which we followed back down to the road and then to the car parked at Pont ar Elan.

As forecast, the weather began to clear as we descended. We sat down to eat our lunch at the picnic area where we had parked the car and were treated to the spectacular sight of a merlin chasing after a meadow pipit over the river in front of us. The meadow pipit got away. What an ending to what turned out to be a fun day despite the weather.

More photos here