The Welsh Coast to Coast
Higher, wilder, lonelier and even lovelier – as CW found out.
Like its more famous English sibling, the Cambrian Way follows the dream of walking coast to coast across the most beautiful terrain in the country. Unlike Wainwright’s celebrated trail, it’s higher, wilder, lonelier and lovelier – as CW found on its three-year traverse.
IT LOOKED LIKE a rock, a pale grey stepping stone to help me hop across the peat bog. But as it sank into the mucky water beneath my boot I realised I was wrong. I made it – soggily and a little hysterically – to safety. The poor skeletal sheep I’d taken for a rock had not been so lucky. I was somewhere in the deserted hills of central Wales, halfway along the 291-mile Cambrian Way from Cardiff to Conwy, and this wasn’t quite what I’d imagined when I set out 12 days ago.
For years I had been itching to trek this trail. Who could resist a path billed as ‘ The Mountain Connoisseur’s Walk’? A route ‘where the quality of the scenery has been the first consideration in planning’? The Cambrian Way pursues the high ground like a butterfly chasing nectar, flitting along a skyline of great Welsh peaks – Twmbarlwm, Sugar Loaf, Pen y Fan, Plynlimon, Cadair Idris, Cnicht, Snowdon, Glyder Fawr, Carnedd Llewelyn – to name but a few. I couldn’t wait to see the landscape morph as I journeyed from south coast to north, from grassy hills to gnarly heights.
So one May day I set out from Cardiff Castle with my sights set on Conwy Castle, a country and three weeks of walking away. I’d pegged this opening stretch as the dull bit to get to the good stuff, but as I turned into Bute Park the bus exhaust turned to birdsong, pavement to green path, and the River Taff twinkled off to my left. Yes, there was the M4, but that soon vanished as I dug into the first climb, up through forest thick with star-flowered ramsons to the fairytale turrets of Castell Coch. The magic continued along the ridge to Machen. Squished up between the conurbations of Cardiff and Caerphilly it was full of surprises: leafy holloways, wooded dells, rushing streams, and pops of view to the Bristol Channel.
Tony Drake clearly knew what he was about. For like England’s Coast to Coast, The Cambrian Way was the brainchild of one enthusiastic rambler. Drake kicked the idea off in 1968, the Countryside Commission got on board, but the route met extraordinary resistance. It was opposed by farmers, their unions, county councils, national park authorities, and even the British Mountaineering Council as it might lure ‘peak baggers… into difficult and remote areas’.
Drake finally despaired of official support and its ludicrous compromises: almost every highlight from Pen y Fan to Snowdon was omitted from various alternative routes suggested. In 1984, he went ahead and published a guidebook to his Cambrian Way, using rights of way and de facto paths – much of it now official access land thanks to the Countryside and Rights of Way Act (2000). Opposition continued and at one time, his book was banned from sale in the Brecon Beacons Mountain Centre.
People started walking, but it was hardly the dreaded flood. I only met one other trekker on the entire trail (encouragingly, he was walking it for the third time). Perhaps it’s simply because nobody’s heard of it. Or perhaps it’s because of the stats: almost 300 miles and 41 checkpoints to tick off; more than 78,000 feet of ascent or the top of Everest from sea-level, two-and-a-half times over; rugged, often trackless terrain; and one single Cambrian Way sign on the whole route. I know it scared me.
And the first days were hard, as they often are on a trail. However prepared you are, walking hour after hour makes muscles howl and kit niggle. I was paranoid about injury: pulling out on day two with a septic blister was not how I wanted this story to end. And the notion of a gentle start in the south evaporated on day two as I gasped up the slopes of Mynydd Machen, quickly followed by Twmbarlwm. It’s topped by an Iron Age hillfort – always a yardstick for a good view – and I heard one walker say to his friend: ‘I feel like God up here.’
It took a while to stop batting along like I had a deadline to meet. There was just one thing on each day’s to-do list: walk. Instead of always keeping on another five minutes, I gradually learned to stop whenever the whim struck. It struck frequently. On day three, I lounged on every hilltop from the folly above Pontypool to the Blorenge above Abergavenny, listening to the breeze in the grass and the distant bleat of lambs, awed by the depth and breadth of the valleys below. I started to relish the now: I knew some of the miles to come would be hard, some would probably hurt, but in that moment things felt good.
I’d been playing with the boundary of the Brecon Beacons National Park all day – I’d never truly appreciated how close to the south coast it is – but this was little-trodden country. It wasn’t just there was nobody in sight; it felt like there would rarely be anyone in sight. And the views were surprising, with little Skirrid looking properly Alpine across the Usk valley, its doublepeak profile due either to an ancient landslip or Noah’s ark bumping into the ridge. Consistently, as the trail unfolded, these in-between places delivered unexpected delights.
There were superstars to tick off in the next few days too, starting with the volcano-mimicking cone of Sugar Loaf. As I climbed its sharp slope my breath puffed in cold clouds, hanging in an atmosphere of ominous stillness. This was the calm before an unseasonal storm, due to bring winds gusting to 70mph. I was faced with the first awful decision. The Way takes a detour here to explore the long fingers of the Black Mountains to Waun Fach and Twmpa, arriving two days later just four miles from where I stood. Should I battle – all alone – along those galebattered ridges? Or would it be safer to drop straight down to Crickhowell? Would I be a wuss to cut the corner? Had I failed already? A hail shower pounded down; bright sunshine followed in its wake. The weather was as indecisive as I was.
Discretion trumped valour. I trudged back into the Usk Valley, the wind now strong enough to stop me in my downhill tracks. I was furious with myself for giving in, while also pretty sure it was the sensible decision. I tried to console myself that Drake included detours for those omitting the Black Mountains, and wrote in his guide ‘individuality is to be encouraged’. I reminded myself of the motto of hikers on America’s ultra-long trails, the Appalachian and the Pacific Crest: always walk your own walk. As the rain hosed down, I comforted myself with a gigantic Chelsea bun from Askew’s bakery in Crickhowell, the kind of sugar loaf you can relish whatever the weather.
It turned out to be just the first of many detours and deviations. I was still walking coast to coast and the Cambrian Way was still my guiding star, but I’d broken my compulsion to stick with every step and checkpoint of the trail. Day five dawned bright and very breezily, so I opted for the towpath beside the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal. I was sorry to miss the great sickle scarp of Llangattock above, but the once-industrial, nowleafy waterway did look gorgeous. I realised it wasn’t necessarily the safe option though, when
As well as devising the Cambrian Way, Tony Drake (1923-2012) devoted much of his life to working for walkers, volunteering as Footpath Secretary for the Gloucestershire Area Ramblers for over 50 years. He was instrumental in the development of the Cotswold Way and was awarded an MBE for Services to Public Rights of Way in 2001.
a falling branch hit the towpath ahead. Day’s end brought me to the foot of the central Beacons, and its entire scalloped ridgeline beckoned tomorrow. If you sample one bit of this southern section of the Cambrian Way, make it this. It soars up and down over Fan y Big, Cribyn, Corn Du and Pen y Fan – the tallest peak in south Wales (and southern Britain) and the most popular too. The Way climbs from the southeast along the scarp of Craig y Fan Ddu, and somehow it is both one of the quietest and one of the best approaches. When I hit the main ridge that summer morning I actually hopped up and down with excitement, as the hills angled rakishly up to Pen y Fan, their northern slopes hurtling into deep glacial cwms that turned to fields as they rolled away. It was the highest I’d been so far, literally, metaphorically. Life begins to feel different when you see it all at two miles an hour. As I climbed away from the A470 next morning, the cars belting along below looked like someone had accidentally sat on the remote and hit fast-forward. The rush emphasised the peace up high, as I edged into a blue tumbled with the sound of skylarks. Thousands tackle Pen y Fan; barely enough edge up neighbouring Fan Fawr to wear a path. Beyond, the main route rolled out to the glacier-bitten hill of Fan Gyhirych, but I took an alternative line to the south, tracing Roman footsteps along the ancient road of Sarn Helen, and into Ogof Ffynnon Ddu nature reserve. The Beacons are famed for their graceful sandstone mountains, but here the turf was etched with limestone, as if the grass had developed Greyscale. I peered into a shake hole and considered: a raindrop falling here would vanish through a labyrinth of tunnels into the deepest cave system in Britain – the Cave of the Black Spring. I wasn’t standing on solid ground. I was standing on Swiss cheese.
The bulky massif of Mynydd Du or the Black Mountain loomed across the valley. I adore this hill, but the following day it made me sob, properly and uglily. It was bitterly cold and the slog up the long ridge of Fan Hir was relentless. I was so tired after a week of non-stop hill-walking that I could only think of the coming miles as something to get through. I was oblivious to the huge panoramas and glassy upland lakes that I normally whoa-ed over. For the first time I properly doubted whether I could do this thing. But – and this was a key lesson – one day off fixed everything. For me, rest days on trails make the difference between enduring the miles and loving them.
And so I bade farewell to the Brecon Beacons and the southern section of the Cambrian Way, and began the central one at Llandovery. I could not
wait. Mid Wales is the country’s empty quarter, a place known as the ‘green desert’ for the loneliness of the tussocked, dune-curved hills of its Plynlimon and Elenydd ranges. Drake promised it would be ‘a revelation as to the wilderness and beauty that is seen by few visitors’.
The start on country lanes was subdued, but north of Rhandirmwyn I reached Cwm Doethie. Maybe it’s ironic that of all the days on this mountain trail, the riverside walk sunk in a valley is the one that still shines. It could have been its contrast to all those uplands, or it could have been that it was, as Drake wrote, ‘delectable’. It sliced a steep wedge through the hills, twisting and turning to endlessly refresh the view. Trees marched up the slopes, all the way to the skyline crags in places, and the Doethie ran like liquid sunshine.
And at the top of the valley was Ty’n Cornel, the remotest hostel in Wales. In Drake’s time it was a youth hostel; it is now owned by the Elenydd Wilderness Trust. I could smell food as I approached. It was another guest cooking sardines and curried noodles, the sort of meal that needs a day’s trekking to make your mouth water. I stopped to read the plaque on the wall outside. It was dedicated to Tony Drake and this trail: ‘Through his dogged determination in the face of many obstacles, his vision became a reality… his greatest love was always the wild beauty of his creation, The Cambrian Way.’
The wildest uplands rolled beyond, and I soon found their emptiness both delicious and unnerving. The faintest trods led through the tussocks and vanished in the bogs (I fell in devoted love with waterproof socks), and the views stretched over the bleached slopes. And I mean stretched. From an indistinct knoll called Garn Gron (1775 feet high, four miles south of Pontrhydfendigaid, AKA Bont) I felt I could see more of Wales than I ever had before. I picked out Pen y Fan and the Black Mountain to the south, and what I decided must be far-off Pembrokeshire curving out into the deep blue sea. Plynlimon, Cadair Idris, and Snowdon prickled to the north. I was close to halfway along the Cambrian Way and from this perch I could look along its journey – my journey – for miles in both directions.
Then next day, somewhere out beyond the rippling waters of the Teifi Pools, just past Llyn Fyrddon Fawr, I fell in that bog. Through that poor dead sheep. I could not have picked a lonelier place to do it. Not one right of way crosses this lakespattered, bog-riddled waterworld; they all abandon hope a few hundred yards from the edge. It was also my longest day on the trail – 20.1 miles – and as I staggered into Devil’s Bridge some hours later, smelling a little putrid, having abandoned ‘ boggy and indistinct’ paths for hard road, I fortified myself with three pots of tea.
And that day’s fun wasn’t over: the Vale of Rheidol lay between me and bed. It is a spectacular gorge, deep, sharp-cut, and stippled with trees that made me think I might have reached Canada. A steam train puffed along the valley as I headed down and down to the river itself. Then up and up, to get lost in the hills beyond. I took the wrong right-turn and despite the appearance of a lake – too new to be on the map I told myself – it was a good while before I realised my mistake and, exhausted and stomping mad, corrected course. A few days later I gave in and downloaded maps to my phone to double check my navigation.
Every day overwhelming ‘woohoo’ moments bubbled up from nowhere. One minute I’d be wandering along making up a limerick (an obsession since the Blorenge which rhymes with orange on day three); the next I’d be overwhelmed by a wave of joy. Sometimes it was a view, like the great trench of Cwm Hengwm on the far side of
Plynlimon, the highest peak in this middle section, on day 13. Or hitting a short section of Owain Glyndŵr’s Way – a national trail in honour of a Welsh hero. Or finding the one and only Cambrian Way marker in a forest near Commins Coch the next day. Or wandering along the lane to Dinas Mawddwy on another detour on day 15, where wildflowers burst from the hedgerows and the trees were a-chatter with birdsong. Sometimes it was just remembering it was almost time for lunch.
Then, to my surprise, I was in Snowdonia National Park. I had walked from Cardiff to Snowdonia. Go me. But I probably should have paid greater mind to this note in the guidebook: ‘ The additional height means that much of the time will be in cloud where navigation is bound to be difficult.’ Mist was now my world. To start with I relished its soft beauty, the way it draped and dramatised the great escarpment of Maesglase and played peekaboo with the valley below. This was another of those in-between places that proved to be extraordinary. I then told myself that Wales is lush and green for a reason. I relished the intense silence.
But the fog socked in the high ground for days. I didn’t mind over Cadair Idris, as I knew the way
Owain Glyndwˆr was the last native Welshman to be Prince of Wales. In 1400, he led an uprising against the English King Henry IV. Initially successful, the revolt later faltered and Glyndwˆr was last seen alive in 1412. He resisted all promises of pardon from the new king, Henry V, and despite huge rewards he was never betrayed. He’s thought to have died in 1415.
and the clag was mostly just tickling the top. I didn’t mind in the Rhinogs either – I made it to the highest point, tracing the great wall up from Barmouth to Y Llethr, and glimpsed their lunar wonderland. I met a couple heading the other way, her calves bleeding from constant slips on its sharp rocks, and as we watched the next raft of cloud roll in I opted for a lower route to the west. It was luck entirely that brought me to the Ardudwy Way – a gorgeous short trail through the Rhinog foothills. The clag continued and I followed more of the AW the next day, enjoying the novelty of waymarkers, and a clear path, and planks across the bogs.
And then the murk rolled lower and sunk the whole national park in a pea-souper. Moelwyn Mawr and Cnicht were somewhere up there, but I couldn’t even see the fence at the side of the lane I was walking. There was no point slogging up slick rock to no view. Next day, as I vanished into cloud again at the top of Snowdon I thought on things. The forecast was set to fog and more fog. I’d had enough. I dropped down to Pen y Pass and I headed home.
THAT’S WHERE I thought this tale would end. I never admitted that not making it to the end bothered me. I told myself I had walked from the Capital to the roof of Wales and that was enough, but a little voice in my head liked to whisper quitter. Three years later I decided to shut those demons up, and returned with friend and CW gear tester, Rachel, to finish the thing. There were only three days of trail left to go and they were in thoroughbred mountain country: over the Glyderau, the Carneddau, with a long descent to Conwy and the sparkling water beyond. You don’t need to be attempting the Cambrian Way to think this makes a cracking long weekend.
It was a world away from the trail I’d left. The sun blazed, the sky burned blue, and it was so much fun with someone to talk to. I love walking alone, but I’d often felt intensely lonely in those fog-bound days. And as we wandered up the trackless slopes from Pen-y-Pass to Glyder Fawr, the decision to stop three years ago suddenly felt right. Walking alone in mist up here would have been miserable.
But what a dazzling place it was in midsummer sunshine, as bright rays belted off every shard of rock. The hulk of Snowdon dominated the view south west; the Carneddau to the north; but between the two, it was like a giant had taken a hammer to the Glyder ridge and shattered it from end to end. We wound through the angles of Castell y Gwynt (Castle of the Winds) and posed on the Cantilever Rock – as everyone must – before we beetled down past a shadowy Tryfan and lakes gilded by sunset to Ogwen. It was only five miles from Pen-y-Pass, but we had stretched it to nine hours on the hill.
Pen yr Ole Wen soared like an Egyptian pyramid ahead, but instead of scrabbling straight up its eroded nose, we headed round the side to clamber steeply up on firmer rock. It was a haul – I was soaked by the time we hit the summit – but once we were up, the day’s vertical graft was done. The path barely dipped below 3000 feet for the next five miles, charting a course like a woodpecker flightpath: a burst of work to lift to Carnedd Dafydd, then a gentle downward swoop to the next pass, then another burst up to Carnedd Llewelyn, and so on. When I started the ridge I had to keep turning to take in the 360 view; by the end I was almost blasé. Being able to see from Anglesey to Plynlimon was my new normal.
The final day dawned, and like that first one out of Cardiff, it exceeded every expectation. The huge Snowdonian hills were lowering to the sea now, but they were still wild and beautiful, steep and interesting, and the last peak of all – Conwy Mountain – packed a lot of character into its 801 feet.
We bowled down the hill into Conwy to the castle and the final checkpoint. I jumped for joy; I had made it! It had taken three years – almost to the day – and not the three weeks I originally planned. I can’t even properly claim I’ve walked
the Cambrian Way, but I can say I’ve walked castle to castle across Wales. I bought a celebratory icecream and a seagull nicked it. Maybe this whole walk was simply a metaphor for life, and the difference between what you set out to do and the meandering route you actually take. Who knows? But this trail is one heck of a journey, a dream for any walker who loves the high, wild places – whether you walk it all in one go, trek it in bits, or sample its best sections. As Tony Drake concludes: ‘ The author hopes you have enjoyed it – you certainly won’t forget it.’