ROUTE INFORMATION 

Start & Finish - Neuadd Car Park in the Taf Fechan Forest

Length - 14km

Total Ascent - 800m

Time - 5 to 6 hours

Summits - Corn Du, Pen Y Fan, Cribyn, Fan Y Big

Check out the video here - VIDEO

And find the route we took on OS Maps site here - ROUTE

This was the first official 40 Summits hike and made Pen Y Fan the first official 40 summits mountain.

We arrived early at the Nueadd Car park after leaving London around 5.30am, parking was no problem as we’d beaten the rush. The route from here is fairly straight forward and well marked. We headed north from the carpark and then quickly turned west, over a stream, and made the steep climb up to the Graig Fan Ddu ridge. We followed the path north until we reached Corn Du (873m) and after a quick photo on our first summit we made our way across the saddle to Pen Y Fan (886m) for more photos and some lunch. From here we made the steep decent down Craig Cwm Sere and then straight up to the summit of Cribyn (795m), making it our second official mountain summit. We then continued southeastwards, crossing the path and then up to the summit of Fan Y Big (717m) where, if you’re brave enough, you can take a photo on the ‘diving board’. I didn’t have the courage, but one of my walking buddies did manage to crawl out onto it. From here we followed the ridge for a while before heading down the side back onto the main path which took us all the way back to the car park.    

This is a great walk that I’d wanted to do for a while… Fantastic views, lots of ascent and decent, much of it away from the main tracks… More challenging than it looked but well worth it!