Elvie's Year in Photos 2011: Day 43 -Atop the Brecon Beacons

We had a nice but testing walk today. We headed up to the Brecon Beacons for a horseshoe walk described as 5 1/2 miles, moderate, in our walks book. It started with a steep climb to the top of Craig y Fan Ddu, then followed the ridges of Craig Fan Las & Cwar y Gigfran. The views are quite spectacular but the weather closed in and we had sleety showers and a biting cold wind. En route we passed the memorial to the 5 Canadian airmen who lost their lives there in 1942 when their Wellington bomber crashed into the hillside. It was very moving, memorial surrounded with poppies and remains of aircraft still present. We then had an exceedingly steep descent which hurt LB's knee and gave us extremely wobbly legs! The walk wasn't over as there was then a further nasty downhill scramble along the side of the stream & waterfalls then a steep climb back up to the carpark. Both now stiff & exhausted. We're getting old!

Anyway at least Wales beat the Scots at rugby. It's about time we had a win. Also time for some vino so here's the photos. They were taken on the compact camera so not quite the quality of the slr.

This is the cairn on top of Cwar y Gigfran looking towards the Sugarloaf and Gwent Black Mountains