I decided that I wanted us all to complete the Three Peaks Challenge (climb Ben Nevis, Snowdon and Scafell Pike) although not within 24 hours. We hadn’t really climbed any mountains with Tom and Izzy so looked at Pen Y Fan which was only 2 hours away in the Brecon Beacons. The weather was looking good for the Saturday so we decided to just go for it.

Stuart researched a route, we were pretty well kitted out with walking clothes, boots etc so left home in the morning with a plan to arrive just before lunch. As we drove towards the Brecon Beacons we could see that they had snow on top of them which was rather exciting.

We parked up at the Pont ar Daf carpark which is the beginning of the main tourist route up and although we found a space it occurred to us next time we probably should set off earlier!

We headed off out of the car park towards the main path crossing a bridge and stream on our way.

It wasn’t long before we reached some icy snow on the banks (not on the path as it had been cleared by all the walkers) so Tom took great pleasure in walking in the snow not the path!

However, it wasn’t long before even the path was snowy. Tom and Izzy were quite excited as they hadn’t really seen much snow!

^{Reaching the snow line}

When we got to the top of the path and were effectively on the ridge the cold wind really hit us. It was bitterly cold. We needed to walk along the ridge for a short way and although it was only really a rolling bank we didn’t enjoy it as we hate heights!

It wasn’t long before we reached the summit and asked someone to take our photo. We could see another summit to another mountain not far away but despite there being lots of people – with all the snow and ice we didn’t want to hike to it.

We made our way back down the mountain, Tom and Izzy made snowballs and my iphone stopped working because it had become too cold – although at the time I just thought it had broken! We passed lots of people doing army training where they had to run up the mountain. We also passed lots of people climbing up in leggings and trainers which we thought wasn’t the best idea!

^{Walking back down}

In total it took us about 3.5 hours – it was a tough walk but we did take our time and did lots of photo and snow stops.

_{March 2016}