Walk #96 Sugar Loaf, Monmouthshire

The prominent landmark - Sugar Loaf

Walk 17 out of 100
Walk #96 - Sugar Loaf

Monmouthshire

Overall Rating - ✪✪✪✪

Suggested Difficulty - Easy

My Difficulty Rating - ✪✪✪

Suggested Time - 3h 30m

Actual Time Taken - 2h 12m

Distance in book - 6.6km
Map my walk Distance - 7.27km

National Trust car park, start/finish

So much for not leaving it too long before the next walk... This teaching business is a bit full on aye it?! Anyway, happy summer to all those like me who are now on cloud nine with 6 weeks off. A year on from the Wales trip with work topped off with a walk in Beddgelert, we found ourselves back in Wales but this time in the Brecon Beacons. The start of the walk is a short but fairly scary drive from Abergavenny, some will appreciate the high starting point of this one so there isn't too much climbing.

I've given the walk a 4 star for it's great views, fairly simple route (which we totally did in the opposite direction on purpose...) and the small but pulse raising climb. As you can see your target right from the get go, you would think the route was easy to navigate, but apparently not! Thought we were ticking along nicely and then looked at the map and realised we were following the route backwards! The rest of the route was pretty straight forward, there are plenty of paths up the Sugar Loaf and really, you could follow any one of them and get the same end result.

The walk had a fair degree of difficulty despite the book claiming it is an easy one. The climb up to the top of the Sugar Loaf was quite steep along a pleasant ridge line and there is one of those notorious/annoying sections where you have to go downhill to go uphill again! I'm not really sure why you are given over 3 hours to complete the route, we weren't rushing and managed it in just over 2 hours.

One for the kids...

As you can see from the pictures, the views across the top of the hill were delightful. Thankfully, the clouds were high enough to give us good visibility from the top and provide me with another cheeky 360° photo opportunity!

After tackling the Sugar Loaf there is a steep descent down into a valley before climbing back up to the car park (or the ridge line walk if you do the route properly!).

I would recommend this one if you are in the Brecon Beacons but don't fancy one of the larger, more challenging hill climbs in the area. The views at the top are great and it offers a bit of difficulty getting up there.

Thanks to Ricky and Paul for the company and, as always, thanks for reading.

Stef.

Here's the link to the walk on 'Map My Walk'

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