If you’re a regular reader of my blog you’ll know that it’s not long now until I set off for Iceland to have a crack at The Laugavegur Icelandic Trek.

In preparation for this multi-day trek across the highlands of Iceland I have tasked myself with completing a series of mini treks and microadventures to toughen me up a bit and to help me get used to the routine of multi-day camping and hiking.

With that in mind I set off over the weekend to Wales. The idea was a simple one consisting of basically driving to South Wales and parking up in the village of Talybont-on-Usk, then hiking off up into the surrounding hills on the fringes of the Brecon Beacons and spend the night camped out somewhere wild then break camp in the morning and carry on the trek across the mountains.

By challenging myself to do this I would be hiking a good 30km across rough mountainous and wild terrain over the two days, camping out with no facilities for the night, carrying everything in and out on my back in a 65L rucksack and toughening up my notoriously easy to blister feet along the way! Perfect!

I’m glad to report the weekends little microadventure went off without a hitch. My new Zephyros 1 tent worked a treat and pitched with no real issues considering I had never even erected it before (a possible catastrophe in the making nicely avoided) and additionally the weather was sunny and clear for once so no navigational difficulties encountered either.

On the down side though one of my feet did blister slightly, but in reality I could have carried on for another day without any real problem so that all bode well for the upcoming trip to the land of the Vikings.

For anyone interested I hiked around an area known as the Talybont Hills on the eastern fringes of the Brecon Beacons and in two days of hiking bumped into only one other hiker en-route until I started to descend at the end of the second day back into the valley and the village of Talybont. Given that this was an exceptionally sunny bank holiday weekend that says a lot for the area and confirms what I already thought that once you get away from the main ridge in the Brecons you can find solitude and uncrowded hills a plenty to hike around in peacefully.

Next up will be another training trip to Wales and a two dayer involving an ascent of Pen-y-Fan via the north ridge route (the best way up), followed by a wild camp up at Cwm Llwch a small glacial lake just below the summit with day two consisting of a full traverse across the Brecon Beacon ridge bagging all of the highest summits before descending back down to the reservoir in the Talybont Valley.

Until then though here are some pics from the weekends training trip:

Below are the online route maps from the 2 day hike:
GPX file of the route Day 1
GPX file of the route Day 2