I was given a weekend pass to go and do some camping and hiking around Wales recently. Annoyingly I rolled by ankle the weekend before the big day, a tragic reality of being overweight and getting old.

So the gruelling ascent of Snowden followed by an attempt at the Fan Dance (slowly) was sacked off.

For those that don’t know what the Fan Dance is:

Instead I stayed at a nice little camp site in Brecon.

Instead of the Fan Dance we did a little walk over to Pen Y Fan which was hard enough and took in some great views.

There are even some wild horses, I didn’t even know that this was a thing!

It was too hard on my ankle so 12km from camp with no signal there was a panicked review of the map (I can just about remember how to read one) and it showed a Train Station. I wasn’t hopeful on the basis that I was on the side of a mountain (ok a steep hill) but low and behold a steam train turned up to take me to the Town of Pant (kinda exaggerated the name but not the Train).

I informed Steve (the conductor) that I had bitten off more that I could chew on a dodgy ankle and I offered to pay some fare and he responded with “get on the carriage there and I don’t want to see you boys again” with a cheeky grin.

I was then able to settle down and eat steak off what appeared to be an old tire rim turned into a BBQ.

Oh and lets not forget that it was freezing (3 degrees) in the evening resulting in me thinking that my sleeping bag had broke (slaps hand to face) and put on my survival bivvy to still be cold.

Camping is the best!!!