By the time I'd parked up at Gospel Pass and climbed onto Twmpa, the sun was setting and the colours were seeping out of the landscape. By the time I reached the head of the reservoir at Grwyne Fawr, I was relying on the moonlight and my headtorch to find the bothy that I knew was there somewhere ...
Every outing has its lessons: earlier this year I'd learned that if night is falling and you can see that your torch is running out of power, it's better to change the batteries before they completely run out in the middle of a dark wood. That kept me busy for a while.
This time, the lesson was that if you're heading to a bothy you've never visited before and arriving in the dark, it's a good idea to write down the grid reference rather than just memorise it. The dark plays havoc with your convictions: was it 227312 or 222713? Of course there was no mobile signal for me to call home and check.
After a brief but entertaining game of hide-and-seek, the bothy finally gave up its location at the bottom of a steep gorge where the stream flows into the dammed valley. It was fairly invisible from the path.
I love the moment when you push on the door of a bothy and let yourself into a stranger's house. Simple shelters are so luxurious when benighted in the mountains. This one was cute as a button: one small room with a sleeping platform upstairs, across the stream from a small copse of trees providing fuel for the woodburning stove. The previous occupants had done me proud, leaving new candles, dry wood, a whole bag of kindling, all of Saturday's paper and half a bottle of Sambucca!
With the stove roaring, dinner on and the candles flickering, I put my sense of euphoria down to the night walk, the stunning location and perhaps partly the Sambucca. I kept having to go back outdoors to admire the fat silver moon gleaming over the reservoir and the bulk of the Black Mountains.
In the morning I gathered some dead wood to replace what I'd used and spent a bit of time sawing it into logs for the next visitors. Karmic equilibirum established, I headed back up the valley and onto the long ridge of Waun Fach, the highest point in this Eastern section of the Brecon Beacons National Park. It was fun watching the gliders for a while, until I climbed into cloud and spent the next couple of hours following compass bearings in the fog. I bet the views are great!
I came back down into the visible world alongside the thick pine plantation of Mynyyd Du Forest, where I found a flat section alongside the river adorned with a succession of fire rings, at the end of the twisting road coming up from the South. It's amazing how well roads deliver litter into the landscape: I was a bit saddened by the plastic bottles, and bemused by the quantity of loo roll strewn around the woods: the lack of poo suggests that girls are to blame. Girls - drip dry or burn your loo roll!
I rigged up my tarp and gathered kindling and fuel as the evening swept in. Two other groups of campers drove in and joined me in ignoring the 'no camping' signs. Actually, it was one of those pictorial signs with a line through a tent, so I felt OK about my tarp. Perhaps the Forestry Commission should try education rather than prohibition, which clearly doesn't work.
I woke up warm and rested at dawn, and seized the day, breaking camp around 8am. As I climbed the opposite side of the valley to that explored the day before, the weather turned pretty nasty and I shortened my route back to the car. It was still three and a half hours of battling the wind and the sideways rain, but all good fun and I've seen worse. At least the ridge was broad enough to make falling off impossible. It's amazing how far your snot can fly in a mountain wind ... I wonder whether there's a record for that?
The bothy at Grwyne Fawr is maintained by the Mountain Bothies Association: you can subscribe for £20 at http://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/
