Waun Fach, GW/SW-002 - 811m ASL - SO 215 300 - OS Explorer OL13 - 8 SOTA points       

Sunday 29th May 2005 dawned, and we had slept well.  Further inspection of the maps and atlas revealed us to be in Wonderland - more SOTA summits than we had ever dreamed of, all within spitting distance.  True variety too, with everything from 1 to 8 pointers, easy, moderate and more strenuous walks.  Our camp site was just about at the point where the three SOTA regions of GW/MW, GW/SW and G/WB meet.

We decided to have a crack at this one.  It was a longer drive than several others, but looked a nice walk.  In fact, a major bonus was that the driving route took us through a small town/village called Talgarth, where we noted pubs, hotels, cafes and a chippy that all appeared to advertise realistic "non-festival" prices for food.  We resolved to hunt our evening fodder here later.  Heading south on the A479, we noticed the appealing looking hills of Mynydd Troed GW/SW-009 and Mynydd Llangorse GW/SW-015 to our right.  At Crickhowell, we turned left and drove through the narrow twisty lanes until the wider tourist road into the Mynydd Du Forest.  We parked on the grass adjacent to the road near the north end of the forest, and crossed the footbridge.  At this point, we went immediately wrong.  A summit path follows the stream north and then ascends the hill, following the fence along the north boundary of the forest.  However, we missed it and followed in the tracks of many others up to the forest ride.  We the followed this as it curved around the north of the forest, generally keeping to about ten feet directly above the path we should have taken.

In any case, the forest ride route offered us a much more gentle gradient, if somewhat longer, and we were soon on a tarmac track that led to a gate at the top NW corner of the forest.  The handy sprang into life with a CQ call from Jon MW0GWL/P - on Waun Fach GW/SW-002!  At 150m lower, and 2 miles away, I reasoned that 8 chaser points were fair game, and called in.  We walked up via the cairn of Pen y Gadair Fawr, at 800m ASL just 10m lower than the true summit.  It was a lovely hot sunny afternoon, even above 800m ASL.  Seven contacts ensued, including two summit-to-summits.  We met Jon MW0GWL.  Jimmy once again undertook the photographic duties with each of our cameras, and we began the descent together.  This time, we followed the intended path directly down to the stream, saying 73 to Jon about halfway down - he clearly could not cope with the pace that Liam was setting!

Thanks to the following stations, all worked on 2m FM, the first with 4 watts, the next two with 2.5 watts and the remainder on 0.5 watts: