Page 10 - Cracking Walks - Energetic

Walk 2 Crickhowell’s Three Pens
On the edge of town at a fine covered memorial fountain, turn right up Gwernvale Lane and follow it, bearing left to Gwernvale Farm. Turn left through the farmyard and follow a metalled track past a sheep-feeding station to another metal gate. Go through the gate and follow the track, made from concrete sleepers, uphill towards Twyn house. Just before the house, take a stile on the right and follow white (Beacons Way) waymarks uphill past a ruined farmhouse. At the second waymark, ignore yellow waymarks to the left and continue uphill and left to a metal gate with a white waymark. Follow the waymarks uphill between old stone walls until a double gate leads onto the open access hillside B .
Follow the white waymarks, first to the right and then left and uphill to the corner of a young pine-wood. Turn left (W) along the upper edge of the wood for about 450m until the wood thins out and the wall briefly turns 90° left, with two large hawthorn trees on your right. Here you leave the Beacons Way and head half-right uphill (bearing 354°) for about 300m, past two more hawthorn trees and staying below the steep gorse slope. Join a larger grass track heading right, uphill between stands of gorse and then left to a low cairn on the valley rim. Here the track splits. Pen Cerrig-calch beckons ahead, but save it for later. Follow instead a narrow track to the left (first N, eventually W) for about 2.5km around the grand rim of Cwm Mawr to Pen Gloch-y-pibwr C , the Shepherd’s Bell Top. There are wonderful views ahead to the Brecon Beacons – imagine the crowds on Pen-y-Fan and rejoice in your Black Mountains solitude!
The fine cairn, topped with a seat of stones, makes a good vantage point for a break and sustenance. Ahead lies Pen Allt-mawr (Big High Top), your high point for the day at 719m (2360 ft). Follow the track NE, then N, round the edge of the ridge, then heading up to the right to reach the trig point D . This is a marvellous viewpoint with 360° views of the Black Mountains, the Brecon Beacons and many lesser hills and valleys.
Tear yourself away and turn back S then SE, this time following a larger track along the E edge of the ridge, for about 3km to Pen Cerrig-calch (Limestone Top), the trig point and summit cairn E lying just beyond the rim of a short, steep grassy ascent. This summit is well named, as you are standing on one of the few remnants of limestone north of the River Usk – most of this relatively young rock was scraped away by the last Ice Age, leaving older Red Sandstone exposed.
Continue by a choice of tracks heading SE. These rejoin and head steadily downhill for about 1.5km, then more steeply down a grassy zig-zag with Table Mountain ahead. Make your way across the bracken slopes and take the stepped path up through the Iron Age fortifications to the top of Table Mountain F . Take in the panorama at your leisure, then walk towards the distant Sugar Loaf mountain (it looks like a volcano but never was one) and by the piles of stones take the path going down through the old gateway of the fort. The path swings left and then you take the grassy path leading down to the right which curves round the lower slopes of Table Mountain.
Enter and leave a small wood at stiles. On emerging from the wood, go down the left hand edge of several fields with stiles, then go along a path between hedges. 10 metres before this path crosses a stile and turns sharp left, go through a gate on the right into a field with The Wern Farm at the far end of the field. Go through a gate into the farmyard and turn left down the farm track leading to a road G .
Turn right heading downhill. Take the first right into Llanbedr Road and continue downhill to the A40 Brecon Road. Turn left for Crickhowell centre and CRiC A .
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