After some flattened cheese and ham sarnies and fighting the urge to nip down to the view point for an ice-cream, I crossed the A4069 and headed up towards
Carn Pen Rhiw-ddu. This is the first of a series of cairns on this final section of my walk. A few years back I was up here walking with Helen and our dogs when I spotted an arrangment of stones I imaginatively named
Man in the grass because they've been placed to resemble a man. I know it's a man because the arrangement is quite detailed! There are some stones arranged into words too but they're not visible enough to decipher. I spoke to the local warden who knew nothing about it until I told him but I've heard nothing since. I will post some photos on my
Black Mountain blog.
Pity about the haze. Still, you can see four further cairns ahead of me in this picture. There is no distinguishable path from this point to the next cairn so I took as direct a line as I could across the peat bog and heather.
Halfway across the first peat bog I jumped a mile as loud
scaap noise came from a few feet away followed by four fleeing birds. I caught this one on full zoom before they flew off again. They were Snipes.
Carn Pen-y-clogau. The time was getting on for 15.30hrs when I got to the cairn but I was feeling good and excited to see new ground. The wind had died so I could listen to the Skylarks as I walked on. Again , I took photos of the top but I'm not going to post them - get your boots on!
This is the ancient, stone lined, drovers track between Upper Brynamman and Brest Cwm Llwyd. I'll try to mountain bike this now that I've found it.
It seemed like an age to get to
Tair Carn Uchaf (on which I'm stood) Grid Ref SN695175. The walk to here was quite laborious through the deep heather, sprinkled with rocks. I can see why there are no paths through it! The view back towards Foel Fawr and beyond shows that this leg is by no means a short one either.
Again looking East with all the cairns in view. Some of these are simply marked as
Cairn on the OS map by the way. I'd never been to these particular cairns previously and had made the schoolboy error of thinking they were closer than they actually were. I didn't pull my map out to check distance or location all day. I just walked to where I liked the look of. I could have dropped off the mountain back at the A4069 and walked home but as the weather had improved I felt the urge to walk to the end of the national park.
The final high.
Tair Carn Isaf at 459m is the most Westerly triangulation pillar of the Brecon Beacons National Park. From here I made a quick phonecall to Helen to give her directions to where I wanted to be picked up from - I can't give you an exact Grid Ref because its off my OS map but its about 100mtrs West of SN670164.
Pity about the haze. Still, you can see four further cairns ahead of me in this picture. There is no distinguishable path from this point to the next cairn so I took as direct a line as I could across the peat bog and heather. 
Halfway across the first peat bog I jumped a mile as loud scaap noise came from a few feet away followed by four fleeing birds. I caught this one on full zoom before they flew off again. They were Snipes.
Carn Pen-y-clogau. The time was getting on for 15.30hrs when I got to the cairn but I was feeling good and excited to see new ground. The wind had died so I could listen to the Skylarks as I walked on. Again , I took photos of the top but I'm not going to post them - get your boots on!
This is the ancient, stone lined, drovers track between Upper Brynamman and Brest Cwm Llwyd. I'll try to mountain bike this now that I've found it.
It seemed like an age to get to Tair Carn Uchaf (on which I'm stood) Grid Ref SN695175. The walk to here was quite laborious through the deep heather, sprinkled with rocks. I can see why there are no paths through it! The view back towards Foel Fawr and beyond shows that this leg is by no means a short one either.
Again looking East with all the cairns in view. Some of these are simply marked as Cairn on the OS map by the way. I'd never been to these particular cairns previously and had made the schoolboy error of thinking they were closer than they actually were. I didn't pull my map out to check distance or location all day. I just walked to where I liked the look of. I could have dropped off the mountain back at the A4069 and walked home but as the weather had improved I felt the urge to walk to the end of the national park.
The final high. Tair Carn Isaf at 459m is the most Westerly triangulation pillar of the Brecon Beacons National Park. From here I made a quick phonecall to Helen to give her directions to where I wanted to be picked up from - I can't give you an exact Grid Ref because its off my OS map but its about 100mtrs West of SN670164. 