Black Mountains trip report

Bank Holiday weekend and on the Sunday a weather forecast to get enthused about for a late afternoon excursion to the northern escarpment of the Black Mountains. The Black Mountains escarpment is part of the Great Red Edge that runs across the Brecon Beacons National Park, so named due to the underlying Old Red Sandstone bedrock. The Black Mountains have undergone repeated exposure to the action of glacial ice and periglacial processes, yet the plateau areas show little apparent sign of glaciation. Surprisingly, comparatively little research has been published on elucidating the evolution of the Black Mountains landscape. The Black Mountains also held some importance for ancient people, as a number of funerary monuments were built in the adjacent landscape. From some viewpoints on the escarpment a number of Neolithic chambered tombs sited at lower elevations can be viewed and Bronze age cairns also occupy some prominent positions at higher elevations. The reason for the siting of the Neolithic funerary monuments locations remains an enigma.

The plan was to walk along the escarpment, with stops to take in the views and to photograph the expansive views as shower light flitted across the landscape, before looping back over moorland and deciding on where to linger for sunset.
The weather was warm and the ascent made in full sunshine, which made matters unpleasant. When the hill slope eased, unerringly, cloud rolled in and that was the last of the sun for the next couple of hours walking. Stops were made to take in the views from the escarpment, the camera gear was not required. A notable highlight was watching a Kestrel demonstrate its mastery of the wind to quarter the escarpment ridge, at times it hovered a matter of metres away, too close for the binoculars field of view. It was surprisingly warm, even with the absence of sunshine and with a stiff breeze at ~750m ASL, a base layer was sufficient.

A brighter area of sky on the western horizon provided some cause for photographic optimism. However the elevated views were marred by reduced visibility, I guess due to a moisture associated with the low level overhead cloud, whilst lower down below 600m the visibility was good. The air clarity determined where a location for sunset would be and a descent made to an outcrop of bedrock with views.
The nature of the vertical joints/fractures in the bedrock outcrop, appeared to correlate with the orientation of the ridge. It would not be unreasonable to suggest that the geological structure exerted some control on the evolution of the landscape.

The sun did sink into the letterbox of clear sky on the horizon and with overhead cloud, the quality of the resulting light was very good.

Needless to say it was a good trip.

Wild camping - two bites at the cherry

The met office and mountain weather information service respective forecasts converged to deliver the prospect of potentially a decent sunset AND following sunrise AND I was free of work commitments = wild camping trip. With the sun rising and setting near to the maximum azimuth of summer solstice, a north facing view would offer the best prospect.  The Carneddau in Snowdonia were long overdue a visit, but as so often, 24hrs out the weather forecast changed and not for the better. The plan was revised to further south in Wales, Fforest Fawr and the northern escarpment of Y Mynydd Du, with its scarp and suite of glacial and periglacial landforms. It's an area I know fairly well and a location although well photographed, hasn't quite yet made it onto the UK's landscape portfolio bucket list. Despite some valiant efforts, I've failed miserably to get a respectable sunset/sunrise image of the view and geomorphology.

The weight of the wild camping pack made for slow going up a very modest gradient across the moorland, giving me plenty of time to reflect on; my physical conditioning was sub prime; the ascent of the Carneddau would have been an interesting experience; George Monbiot's observations on the environmental destruction by sheep is pretty much on the money; the flowering bog cotton clearly demarcated areas of degrading peat and when stringers of cirrus cloud started streaming across the sky, I'll confess to wondering why I bother. I did stumble upon a delightful camping spot, a raised fairly level pitch on moss covered ground, a nearby stream and a pitch with a wonderful backdrop, things were looking up. With the tent pitched, dinner cooked and heartily eaten, it was time for a wander.

With wanderlust in overdrive a gulley was ascended on Fan Brycheiniog to see if there was anything of floral interest and on ledges inaccessible to sheep, there was a surprising diversity of flora, most of it past its photograph 'best by date' or inaccessible, a cushion of mossy saxifrage was the highlight.

The main viewpoint for sunset was the escarpment of Bannau Sir Gaer with its suite of geomorphological landforms and exposures of sedimentary geology. With a viewpoint found, there was plenty of time until sunset to stand back and contemplate Deep Time. The youngest features visible are the alluvial fans at the foot of gulleys and vivid active debris flows that scar the hill slopes, some geomorphologists speculate that the active debris flows have been initiated due to a change of grazing regime to predominantly sheep grazing around 1600AD. The next suite of landforms are the talus cones formed from freeze thaw weathering of mudstones/shales and undermining of overlying  sandstones'siltstones, and represent periglacial weathering at the end of the last Ice Age, with minor accumulations in the holocene. The scarp foot landforms and the cirque enclosing Llyn y Fan Fach indicate possible permanent snow beds and the presence of glacial ice of the late Devensian stadial. Though there are landforms that appear 'fresh' in appearance and other landforms with an older, less defined features, possibly demarcating landforms formed either side of an interstadial between the Older and Younger Dryas stadials. There's also some intriguing overprinting of landforms, that indicates an event chronology; alluvial fans 'gulleying' and burying the talus deposits; talus deposits infilling depressions and overriding scarp foot landforms and some of the scarp foot ramparts show successive crests or ridges implying retreat/advance of glacial ice/snow patches. Then it's into Deep Time proper, with a gap of some 280-300 million years to the end of the Variscan orogeny and the folding of bedrock into the South Wales syncline. Back another 70 million years to the end of the Devonian, conglomerates were uncomformably deposited onto a strata of the Lower Devonian. The lower Red Devonian sediments originated from a vast mountain chain eroding to the north. A few miles to the north, in the Myddfai Steep Belt, Silurian strata is almost vertical in attitude and striking SW to NE it represent an expression of the Caledonian orogeny and what is now believed to be a terrane boundary, that pushes the geological history back into Proterozoic.

With sun always setting into a blanket of cloud it was a case of making the most of the last rays of warm light for an image.

On the walk back to the tent some thought was given to what the Cirrus clouds heralded for dawn.

The resident Sky Lark population woke me before the alarm sounded about 03.00hrs, with the tent being buffeted and an ominous 'booming' noise to the west, suggested the weather wasn't going to play ball. A look outside and the NE horizon seemed promising, alas Y Mynydd Du was blanketed in hill fog, sigh. Plan A was abandoned and other options considered with a cunning photography plan B of an image of flowering bog cotton at sunrise formulated.

Eroding peat hags reveal a land surface that is probably representative of its appearance at the end of the last Ice age, when this area would have been tundra.

The weather then deteriorated rapidly and a damp hill fog blanketed everything, which made for an interesting bit of compass work to find the tent again.

The weather seemed set in, so I 'rested my eyes' for a while and opened them to find the hill fog lifting and cloud breaking up, the best of the light was long gone, but the tent pitch deserved a record shot before breaking camp and heading home.