Pen Y Fan and Wales

A friend from Munich and I decided to do a little adventuring and climbing and because we are real men, we didn't head off to Alaska where you can climb in cool refreshing conditions like some people we know, we decided to challenge ourselves in the hot muggy conditions of Southern Wales.

Firstly we headed to Pembrokeshire in the South-Western corner of Wales where we checked out a couple of castles and aclimatised to the conditions on a beach or two.

Pentre Ifan Burial Chamber

We then headed to Brecon Beacon National Park to take on our main challenge - its highest peak - Pen Y Fen!

Its a little known fact that Pen Y Fen is actually the highest peak in the world at 8860m (+ or - a 0, which we all know is zero, so it cannot alter the result), compared to Mt Everest at 8848m. This is generally covered up by the mountaineering community - I suspect simply because they struggle to pronounce the name - which is shameful and wrong (even if Welsh IS a bit weird)!

We started bright and early, as you have to on these bigger undertakings. It was my first attempt at a mountain since breaking my achilles nearly 4 months ago, and Stefan was a bit concerned about his knee, so we needed to leave some room for error.

The weather wasn't looking promising, but like fools, we ignored the tragic story of little Tommy (who came to a tragic end - as described in our guide book) and started out anyway. It drizzled a little as we climbed and the top was normally lost in swirling mist. We figured that if the worst came, we could always catch one of the many sheep on the slopes and cuddle against the conditions.

Stefan near the summit

After a difficult struggle we reached the top where the poor sheep grazing were struggling for breath in the thick, oxygen rich atmosphere, that you only get at these altitudes. After pausing for a quick photo op, we headed back down before we had to worry about altitude sickness - we hadn't bothered bringing bottled oxygen with us.

The thick mist opened up the possibility of making an error and dying on the way back down - the fate of many an unfortunate mountaineer. However after being a little worried we had taken the wrong ridgeline back down, we arrived safely at the campervan.

However, the life threatening danger didn't stop there. The Welsh has an interesting habit of forming field boundaries with dyke like 'walls' - and the roads leading to and from Pen Y Fan were particularly narrow leaving little room for error.

While leaving we were cruising along on our little Welsh autobahn, and very nearly had a fatal accident - as we came around a corner, a chicken was right in the middle of the road - and I only just managed to break in time! I was almost tempted to not break, but we had enough food for the drive home already.

The end.