Penderyn - Hepste Fawr - Hepste Fechan - Cefn Cadlan - A&E

25 Mar 05

• Total distance : 7 miles.
• Start point : On A4059 a mile or so north of Penderyn, in the layby where there's usually an ice cream van. SN 945 105.
• Weather : Dry, little wind, bright, but only sporadic sunshine.
• Temperature at start 11C.
• Muddiness rating (*=dry, *****=awful) ** but you need to get over (or through) a river
• People passed : No-one.
• Step counter : 13650
• Camera : Minolta Dynax 7 with Ilford FP4 film (scanned in Dimage Scan Dual3 film scanner). Images taken = 36.

Feeling the need to reassure myself that I could still handle film, I left the digital camera at home for once, stuffed the Minolta SLR and zoom lens into my bumbag along with spare film, a map, and compass, and set off on a single-track road towards Ystradfellte. Scientists now agree that it isn't possible to pronounce it if you were born east of Newport - even attempting it can lead to dislocation of the anterior larynx - so it's best to employ a local if you want to go there.

Half a mile from the main road a bridge crosses the river Hepste. You may be unconvinced, because all that's visible most of the time is a dried-up river bed, the pink boulders and pebbles evidence of a great flow at some time in the past, but today arid and silent. Yet the water is flowing, a lot of it, but it's said to be many meters down, only visible on the surface after heavy rain. Two miles up-, and three miles down-river it's a substantial stream.

I turned right along a narrow lane which skirted three small farms. These were all sheep-farms in my youth but two have been substantially renovated, and I presume are now purely dwellings rather than working farms. They'd certainly benefit from impressive views of the Brecon Beacons to the north, the barren moors of Cefn Cadlan and Cadair Fawr in the east, and the Neath Valley leading down to Swansea Bay in the south west.

The metalled track gave way to a muddy path, which after 100m or so opened out onto rough grass, reeds, and bracken. As with much of South Wales, paths marked on the OS map were not waymarked; they're often rights of way rather than established routes.

The sun had been hesitant in favouring me with any usable light, but I thought I could see a patch dithering over the hills some miles away so I sat on a wall for what must have been nearly an hour, waiting for it to arrive.

People often express surprise when they hear that I do most of my walking alone. It's at times like this that I realise how hard it would be to maintain a civil (let alone marital) relationship with a non-photographer in tow. I've even, on many occasions, retraced my steps several miles because the light showed up late. Black and white landscape photographers are completely dependent on getting the right type of light in the the right place, and most of us know that no subsequent treatment in the darkroom or in Photoshop can rescue an image captured in indifferent light.

I was heading for a farm called Hepste-Fechan ("fechan" being one of several Welsh words like "bach" and "fach" that mean "small"), for no other reason than that's where the map said the path ran out. The farm showed signs of having been abandoned in the last thirty years (it had a TV aerial, for instance) but was still sound. Strangely it had no vehicle track leading to it. The map showed a black dotted line leading across the valley to the main road, but when I followed it there was only the vaguest outline of a path. An additional complication was that it forded the river - the same River Hepste which was as dry as a bone two miles downstream - but here a six or seven meter-wide, fast flowing stream. I got across, mostly by hopping from one wet slippery stone to another, the sort of activity outward bound types warn you is a sure way to break your ankle. Ha! Me. As if.

When I reached the road the sun was shining, and despite one of my boots being full of water I couldn't resist the challenge of Cadair Fawr, about half a mile away and 130 meters higher. It's (yikes) almost forty years since I last climbed it, and I'd forgotten what an impressive view was available for such a modest outlay in effort. From the concrete "Trig point" at the top I could see the Beacons and Swansea Bay clearly, but also the Sugarloaf near Abergavenny and the length of the Merthyr and Cynon valleys. I sat enjoying the setting sun for a while, before hacking back to the car across the deserted, soggy, clumpy terrain of Cefn Cadlan.

Even though it was barely 7pm on a March night Mr Whippy had selfishly packed it in for the day, so I had to go for a pint instead.

Click here for map> CadlanMap

Footnote

Two days later, on Easter Sunday, I set out in mid-afternoon from my mother's house in Aberdare, up the nearby mountain called Mynydd Bwllfa, along a path I've walked about fifty times. I've got no photographs from that expedition, partly because the light was poor, and partly because I slipped, sustained spiral fractures to my tibia and fibula, and had to be helicoptered off. So there'll be a few weeks' delay before the next walk.

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-- RodBird - 01 May 2005