I did the fan dance!!!11!! (WARNING: lots of photos)

Archangel (aka SoupDragon) · Thu 28/08/2003 18:07:56

Well, not exactly the fan dance, but three friends and I DID get up to the summit of Pen y Fan, and then some.

For those of you who don't know, the Brecon Beacons are a range of hills in the south of Wales; the highest point in the Brecons is Pen y Fan, at 890 odd metres. Every year potential recruits into the Special Air Service (SAS) have to go through the final part of initial selection here: they have about 8 hours to cross something like 30 miles of steep terrain, including reaching the top of Pen y Fan (hence "Fan Dance"). Well, we had a 30 mile (50 km) long route, but fortunately we had three days to do it in, and here's a short photo diary for your viewing pleasure.

Before we started was the "acclimatisation" walk (which was a ludicrously long 15km), and I thought I'd include some photos of that because of the beautiful mist that hung about the area on that day.

You can't quite see it here, but there's a 200m (600 foot) sheer drop the other side of that grass in the foreground.

This gives quite a good impression of depth. Remember that for this walk we didn't get anywhere near the summit!

Did I mention I suffer from vertigo? That tiny line in the distance is a wide river, with valley.

This picture makes a great wallpaper - message me if you want a higher res version for yourself.

Well, with the acclimatisation over, we returned to Cwrt-y-Gollen CCAT camp for our last shower for three days. Then began the expedition in earnest:

Just some of the kit we had to carry 50km.

Ahh, so THAT's where the army gets its rations from

My good friend S.Sgt Dickins (foreground), with L.Cpl McRae lurking in the shadows. "We're not lost, I just don't know where we are."

A stream. Ain't it pretty?

By the middle of tomorrow we'll be at the top of that hill. Not the big one in front, the even bigger one on the horizon!!

The end of day 1 and Cpl Rocker (that's me!) is boiling some water for the ubiquitous dehydrated chicken balti.

Day 2 begins in earnest. My three friends are perambulating (what a great word!) towards the peaks in the distance. The far, tabletop-shaped hill is Corn Du, and we'll be standing on top of that before too long.

This may actually have been day 1, to be honest I can't remember. But it looks nice anyway.

100-200m up the first hill, Fan y Big, looking backwards. We used this hill as the 'ramp up' to the beacons, if you will. And please, no jokes about the name. I've heard them all a million times already

Me again, wondering how the heck we're going to get up there.[/IMG]

We're pretty much at the top of Fan y Big here, looking back over the path we took, along that ridge to the left. It was a bloody long slog, and there's still a long long way to go.[/IMG]

That peak to the right of the picture is Cribbin; we have to climb that before we can get to Pen y Fan.

At the top of Cribbin, looking out towards Pen y Fan, and Corn Du just behind it. What you can't quite appreciate is that we have to drop about 200m before we can begin climbing that path you can see.

This is 200 times better with depth perception.

My friends enjoyed playing on my vertigo and freaking me out by sitting RIGHT ON THE BLOODY EDGE OF CRIBBIN! That's about 400m down, btw.

After a long uphill struggle, which I haven't photographed due to it being uphill and a struggle, we reach the summit of Pen y Fan. What a sense of achievement!

From left to right: Me, Cpl Cockram and S.Sgt Dickins, doing our own version of the Fan Dance

We begin the long, slow decent. This picture was taken half way down the far side of Corn Du.

To cut a long story short, after walking about another 10km, we arrived at our second camp site. The third day was a mere (ha) 13km, over pretty uninteresting terrain (by which I mean easy

). Just to prove we did it, here's a photo of us by the minibus at the end:

From left to right: S.Sgt Dickins, Cpl Rocker (me), Cpl Cockram, L.Cpl McRae.

So in short, I had an absolutely fantastic time, and if anyone here has the chance to do something similar (this was for a Duke of Edinburough Award Silver), I would strongly recommend it. I've got about 80 photos in total, so if you want me to send you a hi resolution version of anything (for reference, or a BG, or a wallpaper), feel free to forum message or email me. Thanks for reading!

Captain Mostly · Thu 28/08/2003 18:12:59

I live (when not at Uni in Derby) not far from the Brecon Beacons. I'm not sure how impressed people would be by your having climbed Pen Y Fan if they'd been there themselves (or maybe I've only ever gone up the wussy side of i

)

On the other hand

EXPODITIONS ARE COOL!!!! I'm jealous.

Archangel (aka SoupDragon) · Thu 28/08/2003 18:17:28

It's not just that I got up pen y fan, it's that I got up it after already having walked 30km, with a heavy pack on my back. Ok, so it wasn't Snowdon, but it was still aw3sum!1!