OCTOBER 2023 · ADVENTURE
Cliff-top camp at Craig Cerrig Gleisiad
Fforest Fawr, Bannau Brycheiniog
I came for the meteor shower. There was a Draconid meteor shower forecast, clear skies predicted, and the Craig Cerrig Gleisiad escarpment is high enough and far enough from Bristol to give proper darkness. What arrived instead was October fog and heavy rain before I'd even got the tent pegged.
I camped close to the cliff edge, which sounds more dramatic than it is — the logic was practical. On a ridge in strong wind, the edge is where the gusts go over rather than through. The tent was sheltered there in a way it wouldn't have been set back on the flat moorland. Below was Fforest Fawr's valley floor, the farmed landscape already lost in the mist by dusk. I could see the patchwork of fields from the exposed rock outcrop earlier in the afternoon — stone walls, hedges, the geometry of agricultural Wales — before the cloud came down and erased it.
Two hikers, no torches. They passed close enough that I could hear them talking but couldn't see them at all.
Craig Cerrig Gleisiad — October 2023
The cliff face itself is steep, moss-covered, dark in overcast light. The cwm drops away below it. At dusk the sky went purple-grey, the moorland going golden where the last light caught it, the valley below already dark and lost in the rolling fog.
After dark came the voices. Two hikers, no torches. They passed close enough that I could hear them talking but couldn't see them at all. Walking in the dark on a cliff-top path in rain, apparently comfortable with that. They were gone in a minute.
The morning was still. Dense white fog, silent, no visibility beyond thirty metres. Another hiker told me, descending, that the aurora had been visible behind the clouds from the valley floor. The fog that killed the meteor shower had also blocked the aurora. I hadn't known either was happening.
The fog had its own compensation. The cliff silhouette above the void. The tent a dark shape in white.
Dark silhouette of cliff edge against moody twilight sky with fog settling over the landscape
Hiker in yellow jacket standing among wooden fence posts with rolling moorland beyond
Tent pitched on cliff-top in darkness with distant lights from valleys below after sunset
Stone wall and fence running along cliff edge with vast patchwork of farmland stretched below
Open wooden gate in dry stone wall at cliff edge with autumn trees and moorland beyond
Overgrown footpath winding through moorland grass and heather towards distant hills
Rolling moorland with scattered trees and patches of golden grass under overcast sky
V-shaped valley with steep sides covered in moss-green vegetation under storm clouds
Exposed rock outcrop in foreground overlooking patchwork farmland with autumn color
Moss-covered rocky cliff face rising above rolling moorland with farmed valleys beyond
Steep cliff slope with exposed rock and moss beneath stormy grey and white sky
Craggy cliff top with golden moorland stretching toward hazy distant mountains under cloud
Dramatic cliff edge at dusk with moody purple sky and rolling landscape below shrouded in mist
Cliff overlooking farmland at twilight with heavy fog rolling across valleys below