Fancy a weekend away hiking in the Brecon Beacons but not quite sure where to start?
As you all probably know by now, I love getting out on a hike whenever I can! Being outdoors is what I love the most, and not just when I’m preparing for a big mountain climb either. I do it for fun and to keep fit too.
I tend to go for a hiking weekend at least once a month. And it doesn’t always have to be some
exotic far-flung trip that takes ages to plan (I mean don’t get me wrong, I love those too but
sometimes it’s just not possible!).
It’s so easy to organise a quick weekend hike though. Especially in the UK where we can travel around to different places in a relatively short period of time.
So I thought I’d share some of my favourite hiking routes for a weekend getaway. You can do these with your friends – and without taking any time off work.
They will mostly be easy to moderate routes. They are a great introduction to hiking for beginners, or for people who don’t want anything too strenuous or technical.
You can try them yourself or look out for my organised group trips, and we’ll all go together.
To begin the weekend hiking getaways series, I’m sharing my favourite walks in the Brecon Beacons. I went on this trip with friends towards the end of October 22 and have outlined below how we got there, where we stayed and the walks we went on in case you want to replicate any of it. I’ll also include some tips and links to help you research your own trip.
I use All Trails for my routes.
The Location – Brecon Beacons
The Brecon Beacons National Park is a stunning area of natural beauty in Wales, with mountains and moorland, standing stones and castles, lakes and waterfalls. While the park itself covers around 520 square miles of south and mid Wales, it gets its name from the Central Beacons – a mountain range of old red sandstone peaks.
The six peaks dominate the skyline. It includes Pen y Fan, which is the highest summit in the Brecon Beacons and southern Britain. It’s 886m (Everest is 8,849 so you can see the comparison!). The other peaks in the range are Corn Du, Cribyn, Fan y Bîg, Bwlch y Ddwyallt and Waun Rydd. They form a long ridge and the sections joining the first four are in the shape of a horseshoe – which gives the name to the popular Horseshoe Circular walk.
Getting there
I drove from London to Cardiff, which took around 4-5 hours on a Friday evening, or you could get the train to Cardiff. From there, it’s around a one-hour drive to the hike, or you can get a train to Abergavenny or Merthyr Tydfil, but I would say you need a car ideally, otherwise you’ll have to get taxis to your accommodations and the hikes.
You can look up train information on the Trainline website.
If you’re coming from overseas, you could hire cars from the airport, or there are various apps you can use such as Klook or Turo.
Places to stay
With popular hike locations like the Brecon Beacons, I always find it’s cheaper to stay a bit further out, so we stayed at Dunraven Hotel in Rhondda, which is a 45-minute drive from the Central Beacons.
This was a lovely historic family run pub which I’d thoroughly recommend. We ate dinner the second night and had a lovely breakfast both mornings. It was only £5 for a full English breakfast, including coffee! It is above a pub though, so you’d have to bear that in mind if you wanted an early night. We were okay because we were in the pub anyway!
There are loads of other places to stay in and around the Brecon Beacons, including much closer to the hike locations, it’s just that the price will increase the closer you get.
The hiking routes
Day 1: The Horseshoe Circular
Distance: 17.7km
Time: 6-7 hours
Level: Moderate
Parking: Free parking at the start of the hike
This is a great route to do if you want to bag some of the big peaks in the area. It’s a 17.7km loop which takes you up to the Craig ddu ridge to Corn Du, Pen y Fan and down Jacob’s ladder. This is the descent for Pen y Fan and is a bit rocky in places. After you’ve gone down Jacob’s ladder, there are two more climbs to the top of Crybin and Fan Y Big.
As you might expect given that this hike includes the tallest summit in southern Britain, it does start off quite steeply up to the summit of Pen y Fan. It’s moderately challenging overall, but you could do it in trainers if you wanted to – I would personally always opt for walking boots for the ankle support and comfort, but that’s just to give you an idea of how technical it is.
Saying that, it is an area that special forces teams use in their training. But don’t let that put you off! They’ll be taking it up a level with massively weighted backpacks. This hike is well worth it for the views. They really are spectacular. We all know what they say about the weather in Wales, so you have to get a bit lucky to have a really clear day, especially that high up, but even if it is overcast, like it was when we went, you can still get decent views. In fact, the forecast predicted rain for us, but we went anyway and it didn’t rain much.
We started our hike at 10am and it took us around six hours. We were back at the hotel by 5pm. Our group included someone who is actually preparing for Everest and another who is new to hiking and was a bit slower, but managed it fine. There’s no scrambling, just a lot of walking uphill and downhill.
As you might expect given that it takes in Pen y Fan, this route was quite busy at the start as people were getting to the top, but after Pen y Fan it quieted down a bit. I’d say we would pass someone every 15 minutes or so.
Day 2: Llyn y Fan and Fawr, Llyn y Fan Fach
Distance: 15km
Time: 5-6 hours
Level: Moderate
Parking: Free parking at the start of the hike
This hike is also categorised as moderate, but I’d say it’s easier than the Horseshoe Circular. It is really beautiful and my favourite of the two routes as the views are truly breathtaking. You pass two glacial lakes where we saw people wild swimming. In fact, the first lake you come to was listed as a ‘must see’ in Lonely Planet, so it’s definitely worth checking out.
There’s a steep climb up past Llyn-y-Fan Fach to the ridges of the Carmarthen Fans. It’s a little steep coming back down too.
This route includes a few streams to cross with a couple of little jumps and a few areas where the grass is very wet and a bit swampy, so I’d definitely recommend waterproof ankle boots for this one.
It was much quieter than the Horseshoe Circular; we probably passed someone every half an hour or so. It took us around five hours and we headed back to London that evening. We stopped for food on the way home and were back by 10pm, ready for Monday morning!
Other tips and info
I won’t go into the full list of what you should take for a hike because you can read all about that in my guide to what to pack for a one-day hike (obviously just times the amount by two!). But I would say that it’s quite remote in that part of Wales, so I’d recommend getting any snacks and drinks you want to take before you get there.
If you wanted to just do one of the hikes and then do other activities on the other weekend day, or extend your trip, check out the Brecon Beacons website which is a good guide to the area. Adrenaline junkies might fancy the world’s fastest zipline which is at Zip World in the Brecon Beacons.
If you’re wondering how fit you need to be for hiking, I’ve written about that too on how to train for a hiking trip.
