Pen y Fan from Pont ar Daf

The National Trust gives Pen y Fan as 886m and the highest mountain in southern Britain, with Corn Du at 873m beside it, and the Trust owns the mountain and the paths to its summit. The standard route starts at the Pont ar Daf car park on the A470, 8 miles south of Brecon, at grid reference SN 988 199. The cairn on Corn Du is a Bronze Age burial chamber that the Trust records as excavated in 1991, when a bronze brooch and a spearhead were found inside it.

The surface is the story here. The Trust says the slopes were covered in vast erosion scars in the 1980s, before it began repairs; since then its rangers have built 15km of stone-pitched path within a network of 70km, dug 400 drainage ditches and laid 500 culverts, for over 500,000 walkers a year. From the car park the path crosses a footbridge and climbs to Bwlch Duwynt, the windy pass, then crosses the southern slope of Corn Du to the saddle and rises to the summit. The Trust’s circular version returns over Corn Du to the obelisk above Llyn Cwm Llwch, where the body of five-year-old Tommy Jones was found on 2 September 1900, 29 days after he was lost at night; the inquest found he had died of exhaustion and hypothermia.

The Trust gives the circuit as 6.4km and three and a half hours, and the Ramblers put the Pont ar Daf route at about 450m of ascent with no scrambling. Parking is charged around the clock and the Trust describes spaces as limited; the Ramblers add that the T4 Traws Cymru bus stops at Storey Arms, a mile north. Dogs are welcome under close control.

The Ramblers say the standard routes suit reasonably fit walkers with no mountain experience, and children who can manage 450m of steady climbing on stone steps will manage this one. Anyone wanting quiet is better elsewhere, since the Ramblers call it one of the busiest peaks in Wales, and this is not a walk for anyone without a map and the means to navigate in cloud, because the ridge edges steep ground and the obelisk shows what a wrong turn costs. The 16km horseshoe over Fan y Big takes in Pen y Fan as one of four tops for a longer day, and the Ramblers grade it challenging.