Three Pens and a Table

Crickhowell Walking Festival is on from the 1st - 10th March 2013 and bring a local, I felt it my duty to sign up to at least one reasonably long walk this year.

Due to the inconvenience of having to work full-time, I could only rely on weekend walks so decided to choose Walk 12 - Three Pens and a Table on Sunday 3rd March.

Saturday 2nd March was finally looking like Spring had arrived - the sky was blue, the sun came out and one even felt a tinge of warmth on the face whilst being out and about......not so for Sunday 3rd.

The walk was sponsored by Mirandas Preserves which I must say, do a fantastic Raspberry jam.

In true local fashion,we left it right until the last minute, to leave behind 3 children for my fab sister #2 to look after and were embarrassingly the last to arrive at The Old Chapel, Gwyne Fechan but still had time to knock back a swift cup of tea and chocolate biscuit before heading off with the rest of the professionally equipped group of walkers (some of which had travelled quite a distance to enjoy the Welsh hills for the day).

I at least, had a walking shoes on and a decent coat but I could visibly see glances of disdain for my husbands jeans and shoes (In his defence - they are Gore-tex and have been down the Grand Canyon)

Thankfully I had packed two pairs of gloves because as we all ventured up into the Black Mountains, the wind picked up, the cloud came down and each of us, as we hit the top, were buffeted by a "bracing" gale and felt like cold needles being stabbed repeatedly into our faces.  Down came the hoods, the heads and off we all trudged - the leader, John, was quite keen that we kept moving quickly as conditions were pretty hypothermic.  The experienced members of the group agreed that the wind chill factor was at least -15 to -20!

The strange thing is, that despite me continually feeling like I would be the next Sir Ranulph Fiennes (I suffer from Raynaud's Phenomenon), I thoroughly enjoyed the intense buffeting which lasted for about 2 hours or so of the 12 mile hike.

I plan to post up the technical details of the walk from the nearest and dearest which he recorded on his mobile but check out Crickhowell Walking Festival for details of all the other walks that take place.

Typically - today was back to work and what happens....Spring tried to arrive again with sunshine - no two days in Wales are ever the same!