Good Afternoon Ferals!
Zero to Ultra is a brand new section on The Feral Lady site and one of the regular segments I plan to do is our Route of the Month, with a short Suunto Movie to show you where the route takes place and a break down on the types of elevation and topography you can expect.
Most of our routes will be based in and around the Brecon Beacons, because well… that’s where we live, and the will probably vary between 10-40km+ depending where our training is at and what areas we fall in love with.
That leads us to this months route of the month! Siobhan and I had only just come to the end of our third week of training, but we seem to have jumped straight from two 8km runs to now consistently running 12km at a minimum – which is both tough, yet really enjoyable due to our gorgeous summer evenings.
Last Monday we ran a gorgeous 12km route on top of the Blorenge in Abergavenny. The route boasts both gorgeous views of the Sugarloaf and the surrounding mountains, as well as well-marked trails and a bit of elevation gain to really work those quads!
The route starts and finishes at Keepers Pond and works its way over a well-marked path through the bracken, joins a tarmac road for a short spell and then heads up, through the carpark opposite the large masts to the Fox Hunter memorial. From there, follow the trail up to the trig point on top of the Blorenge. Run up to and past the trig point, following the path that now starts to go down the Northeastern side of the hill. From here, the path gently tapers down until it veers off to the right (Now Southeast facing).
Follow the huge path down until you meet a tarmac road, then turn left and follow it down until you meet a cattle grid and a stone wall on your left. Just before the cattle grid is national trail marked wooden gate – follow that path all the way down to the ‘Punchbowl’ – a small lake with a little island in the middle of it. You can keep running past the lake, that path will eventually take you back up to the Keepers Pond, but this time of year a lot of the path is difficult to squeeze through due to the huge ferns and nettles, and it’s hard to keep a good pace.
Turn around at the lake and head back up the trail through to the road, back up the road to the well-marked trail and back up the well-marked trail, up the hill and back to when you veered off right. Here, take the right path (instead of heading up left towards the trig point) and skirt around the side of the Blorenge (there are gorgeous views of the Sugarloaf and the Skirrid from here).
Follow this path all the way along the side of the Blorenge and back down to your car at the Keepers pond carpark.
- Distance: 12.00km
- Ascent: 308m
- Our plodding time: 1hr 48mins
Let me know if you’ve done any more routes of a similar distance in the area – I’d love to find some more gems up here – The views are pretty fantastic!
Speak to you later in the week!
H
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