Another challenging wild camp at Grwyne Fawr Reservoir in the Black Mountains to the east of the Brecon Beacons. As usual the weather was fine when I left home, but the mountains have other ideas. It had been snowing and some of it was starting to melt, which made it a bit tricky.
I was stopping to take photos on the way up (…well how can you not get distracted by those views) and by the time I made it to the spot I had planned to pitch up, the light was starting to fade. Not a problem, all I had to do was cross a small stream and trek up a small hill and I was there. Oh no, because of the snow melt, the small stream was not so small, so I could not cross where planned. I had to follow it up on uneven snow covered ground until I could find a spot to cross the stream. At this point the light was starting to go and I was running out of energy, my legs getting weak, so it was quite tricky. Luckily I found a crossing a few hundred metres upstream, then made my way back down to where I planned to camp. I arrived at my spot just as it was getting dark and put my tent up under torch-light.
The next problem was that my air mattress had a puncture, great! So just a thin foil mat and my sleeping bag to keep the freezing ground at bay. Yeap, it was a cold night and a lot of shivering was done to keep warm. Waking up in the morning and seeing the view of the lake made it all worthwhile though.
