Pen y Fan Horseshoe
Living in the Cotswolds, we’re within pretty easy reaching distance of the Brecon Beacons, and it’s probably the closest place for us to do some proper hill walking. This is a brilliant route that takes in the most popular peak in the Brecon Beacons, but avoids the worst of the crowds for large sections of the walk.
Distance: 9.5 miles
Time: Allow 4 hours
Difficulty: Moderate – a couple of steep climbs but mostly ridge walking. You can bypass the peaks of Cribyn and Corn Du if preferred.
Sheep Watch: We saw very few but be aware, they can be hiding just below the ridges
Parking: Free parking at Forestry Commission car park (CF48 2UT) what 3 words easy.exotic.skylights
Refreshments: None, but stop by The Fellin Fach Griffin on the way back for AMAZING pub food.
If you choose to use the below routes, I highly recommend you getting the premium version of the app – there is no signal on large sections of this walk! I’d also recommend doing this route anti clockwise.
Download file for GPS
The Route
We started at the Forestry Commission car park (CF48 2UT) and it’s a gentle climb up to the banks of the reservoir. This is when the hard work comes, its a steep climb from the reservoir up to the Craig Fan Ddu ridge and Poppy put us to shame racing up the hill while we were trying to catch our breaths!
Once you’re up though, the views are spectacular and completely took our breath away. From here it’s an easy ridge walk along to Corn Du, the first of the 4 peaks in the walk. At this point you can pretty much see where the rest of your walk will be taking you!
Once you’ve reached Corn Du, the path forks right to take you to Pen y Fan. It’s at this point that the crowds from the ‘quick’ Pen y Fan route join you, and there were plenty of them! Pen y Fan is the highest point in the Southern UK, and tourists have clearly caught wind of this! We reached the top of Pen y Fan and there was an enormous queue of people waiting to pose for a picture with the trig point at the top. They must have just been going straight to the top and then home again, because as soon as we left the peak it was pretty deserted again, with the exception of a few wild ponies.
At this stage you have steep downhill off the summit of Pen y Fan, then a lung buster of a climb up to Cribyn and along to Fan y Big, the final 2 ridges in the horseshoe walk. If you’ve had enough uphill by this point, it’s quite easy to bypass these last two ridges as theres a path that follows around the base of the mountains and brings you to exactly the same point.
The path eventually brings you back to Neuadd reservoir, the perfect spot for a picnic, or in Poppy’s case a freezing cold swim moments after this picture was taken! It’s an easy walk downhill back to the car from here.
This walk really was is perfect way to experience a little piece of the Brecon Beacons and we’d highly recommend to get a brilliant flavour of what hill walking in this part of Wales is all about. For the most part you’ll avoid all of the crowds, and the views are truly amazing.
If you have a chance on the way home, stop off at the Fellin Fach Griffin just outside Brecon. You won’t regret it, honestly the food is incredible!
Thanks for reading,
Cara, Andy and Poppy x
