Have the Brecon Beacons ever looked so good?

The Brecon Beacons National Park is an area of outstanding natural beauty beloved of British Army trainees, who frequent it for weekends of exercise, fresh air and teamwork.

Or maybe not.

Maybe it's an area that can look quite attractive on the rare occasions when the cloud lifts and it stops raining and you can haul yourself high enough out of the bog to get a look. And maybe the reason the Army uses it so much is that getting round the place is quite hard work, but not such hard work that they can't load up their recruits with ridiculously heavy bags and still expect them to run for 12 hours non-stop.

The hills themselves are quite strange beasts; their broad, plateau summits and perilously steep sides give them the impression of being vast mountains that have had their tops lopped off. On paper they would appear to be quite easy to conquer, and although they are certainly no great behemoths those flat areas are no walk in the park. Rather, they are a walk through a peat bog. Now, don't get me wrong, bog hopping can be quite good fun if you haven't done it for a while, but its appeal tends to wear off rather suddenly the instant you find yourself thigh-deep in brown, smelly goo. Gaiters will of course help to lessen the effects, but there will almost always be a bit of damp, runny mud that manages to trickle its way into your boot, down your ankle and onto your already-cold toes. And that is not a pleasant feeling at all.

So, as we set off to south Wales last Saturday morning we were expecting to spend the weekend trudging through the mire. We weren't particularly concerned about this as it's what we end up doing a lot of the time, and strangely we do quite enjoy it. However, as we drove further west the world became whiter and whiter. Snow! Amazing! My excitement was tempered somewhat by the fact that I was on hold to the Crucible Theatre box office in an attempt to get snooker tickets and the music they were forcing down my ear was really quite piercing, but by the time we reached the National Park proper the tickets were booked and my attention was turned fully towards the hills. Darn, they looked good!

Our initial plans were for a rather long day out. We parked next to Talybont Reservoir (SO 099197), with an out-and-back trip to Pen y Fan as our goal. As we trudged up through the ever-deepening snow to Allt Lwyd (078189) however, it became clear that this was a little on the over-ambitious side. Not to worry though, the day was quite simply glorious and we didn't really care about tagging summits as we had, after all, been up them all before anyway. We were out and about, with blue skies and sparkling snow, and hardly anyone else was up there with us.

As we ascended a fine ridge up to the first plateau of the day it almost seemed like we were in the Alps, so impressive was the view. Once up on the flat we meandered around in a general north-westerly direction, hoping that the looping tracks we were leaving would make a good pattern when viewed from above. Amusingly, on our way back we discovered that people coming afterwards had used our tracks as a guide, thereby wasting themselves huge amounts of time if they had wanted a direct route to the next hill! We carried on through the col at 057206 and onto the next area of plateau, at which point the view really struck us:

Wow! Pen y Fan looked like a monster! A huge, snow-covered beast with sharp ridges, plunging cliffs and precarious cornices. I desperately wanted to hurry on and climb it. Except, hang on a minute - what's that?

Yuck! People everywhere! Clustering like flies all over the mountain’s towering glory. Maybe we would give it a miss, after all.

You see, a major part of the attraction of the hills for me is the sense of solitude. We live our lives in towns and cities, surrounded by other people, crowded and hemmed in, and so every once in a while (actually, as often as possible) it's good to get away, to stand somewhere in the countryside and have no one else in sight. I am too antisocial to enjoy walking up a hill in a line with tens of others; I want it to be my hill, with my view, and I don't want to share it with anyone other than my close friends. Selfish, I know, but that's the way it is. So I was happy to leave Pen y Fan to the masses and instead enjoy getting knee-deep on Gwaun Cerrig Llywdion.

We did go and tag Fan y Big (036205), mostly because we are shockingly immature and find its name hilarious. But otherwise we were happy to stumble about on our plateau, keeping to the centre so as to avoid the people following the line of the paths which skirt the edge. It was hard going pushing through untrodden snow, and walking through the peat hags felt rather eerie, but I was happy. The hags themselves may have been imposing, but the icicles forming on their sides were beautiful. I broke one off to try as a free 'lolly', but didn't get very far through it as, somewhat predictably, it tasted rather too much of grass and peat.

We wandered back through the col and onwards to the eastern edge of the hill, where we had a decision to make: same way down, or different? Obviously we plumped for the different way, which turned out to be a most excellent choice. The first part of the descent was fairly steep and fairly uninteresting, but then the gradient became even more extreme. There was no way we were going to bother walking down that. Not when we could slide! Richard pulled on his friction-reducing waterproof trousers, I jumped into a survival bag, and we were off!

Initially, Richard was having a great time sliding rapidly downwards, but unfortunately for me we had gone at about the same time and it was all I could do not to slam into his back. Even with my elbows jabbed into the ground to try and brake I was gaining on him. Just as I was about to lose control I lurched over to the right, pulling myself clear. I then careered at an incredible speed down the hill, going faster faster faster. This was better than any rollercoaster ride! After what must only have been a handful of seconds, but which felt much longer, the ground flattened out and I spun myself to a halt. That had been amazing! A university group had watched our descent, and I could tell they were impressed. Casually, we packed the survival bag and trousers away and continued on back to the car.