Wales Outdoors Weekly Roundup 2/2/25

Feb 28, 2025

Wales Outdoors delivered four events this week, twice for a newly digitised city walking tour of Cardiff with an emphasis on the darker side of the city’s history and then our monthly social hiking group meetup, for Fan Fawr and then for Pen y Fan for sunset with a private booking.

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Cardiff City Centre Dark Tour

Our first daytime tour of Cardiff City Centre and what a difference it makes. With daylight comes the ability to walk through Cardiff Castle and into Bute Park and then on through the rest of the tour with all buildings clearly lit by the daylight. On this tour we ended up in Barkers in High Street Arcade for some well deserved hot chocolate and muffins while we told our own tales of strange and ghostly experiences :)

We asked for feedback from this bunch and they were effusive. They loved the images and quotes, which, for them, brought to life the history of Cardiff and its darker side...

Now Kate is tasked with developing the same digital support for all of the Wales Outdoors Tours.

Cardiff City Centre Dark Tour

Our second ‘Dark Tour’ of the week and a small group made up of a couple of locals and a poetry and creative writing student from Australia. This was a nighttime wander and Cardiff was at its best, dry weather, not too crowded and at the end we found a place to chat about personal supernatural experiences, on this occasion the Bluebell, formerly the Goat Major.

Fan Fawr and CCG

A shorter hike for our monthly meetup of the social hiking group, a four hour walk from Pont ar Daf car park and taking in two peaks, CCG and Fan Fawr. It was bitterly cold at the car park and remained so throughout the day, with freezing winds. You can tell that this was the case by the multiple layers our hikers were wearing. At one point Andy offered the group a choice, the easier route or the harder route. The fools chose the harder route and we ascended to the summit of Fan Fawr via its northern slopes which are almost sheer… We did find a spot without wind for lunch, which was brief, and then descended to the start point which on this hike was never much out of view.

Pen y Fan Sunset

Finally, we had a private group of locals from Swansea, sisters, on a 40th birthday jaunt. They had never hiked a mountain before and despite the pain, got round in pretty quick time, being faster than the average group that we manage for this hike. Well done to the ladies and we hope to see them back out with us on one of our future social group hikes :)