Crawling into a small depression in the ground I held Arthur tightly by his shoulder and shouted to make myself heard above the roaring wind.  “Are you cold?”

We had decided to give Fan Brycheiniog a second shot.  ‘Beast from the East 2’ was upon us so our attempt wasn’t going to be straightforward.  We overnighted in the pub car park.  Although there was a sign ‘saying for customers only’, I did find that by stretching the term ‘customer’ to breaking point it was in fact ok for us to stay.  After all, we had spent about £30 pounds in there a couple of months previously.

In the morning we drove a little further so we could approach the mountain from the East.  It was snowing gently but the wind was increasing in strength.  Following the map to a spot that was suitable for parking I stopped and had a look around.  It was time to sort our kit.  Getting out of the car there was only a little snow but the wind was savagely cold.  I went to the boot without gloves and within minutes my fingers were numb.  I dived back into the drivers seat.  Arthur was sitting next to me and was eating biscuits. He casually turned up the heating, “just spend a minute warming up Daddy” he said.    We wrapped up warm.  3 layers on our legs, 4 or 5 layers on our top half.  Poppy (My wife/ Arthur’s Mum) had lent him her hat which is a good bit of kit.  Then we were off.

We had to cross quite a bit off boggy ground and three small streams.  As always I implored Arthur to keep his boots dry for as long as possible.  We enjoyed the hiking.  We were warm enough and visibility was decent by our usual standards.  Occasionally the fog lifted sufficiently for us to see the magnificent Fan Brycheiniog.  Before long we reached Llyn y Fan Fawr.  Last time we were here we were so preoccupied with getting off the mountain we didn’t really look at the lake.

Up the path we went, up the face of the mountain into the re-entrant. A strong wind and and snowy-hail stung our faces and slowed our progress.  The views were amazing but somewhat limited.  I remember thinking the mountain looked like it was made from chalk.  We had still not seen any other people which was a bit disconcerting.

As we reached the top of the re-entrant our progress slowed still further.  We were really struggling to stand.  We carried on for about another 30 metres.  It was hopeless.  The drops off the mountain were dangerous.  I knew this from our last attempt.  We crawled into a small depression but it offered no real cover from the wind.  “Are you cold”, I shouted over the wind as we lead together on the ground.  “No” Arthur replied.  “We’ll never make it” I said knowing any hope of reaching the summit was lost.  “I know” came the reply.  Arthur had a begrudging understanding of our situation.  “Let’s go to the indoor climbing wall” he suggested.

With the decision made I instructed Arthur to crawl out the way we came.  Turning back was a real shame.  We were still feeling strong and our morale was high.  We were just short of the high point we had reached on our previous trip.   The wind dropped with every metre of decent and soon enough we could stand again.  The snow stung as it whipped in and Arthur was happy with his choice of hat.  At the bottom of the path we saw two other groups.  One group were going to head up, the other had decided to call it a day.  We hiked out in high spirits.  The navigation was made easy by following the remnants of our earlier footprints.  Back in the car the weather occasionally improved and we thought about heading back out but within seconds it was bad again and we were happy with the decision.  The adventure had been great and we still had a very good reason to make a third trip back to the wild west of the Brecon Beacons.