TRICHRUG
A long drive for a small mountain, but well worth it. As usual the journey up to The Black Mountain and over it was murky and cloudy - perhaps one day I'll see The Black Mountain on a clear day and that should be stunning. Once over the pass, I took a left down a single track road that brought me, by and by, to the foot of Trichrug, a small grassy dome with fields on its flanks and a summit just in the clouds. There is a public path around the base of the mountain, so I headed up, sometimes contouring and sometimes gaining height, until I saw a path that led up a spur towards the top. The climb was not arduous, and I reached the trig and cairn at the summit in about 13 minutes of easy paced running. The terrain was fairly benign, but for some deep boggy patches and the need to scale a wall or two to get to the top.
The view was lovely, cloud rolling down from The Black Mountain and seeping slowly into the valleys, a castle perched dramatically on a rockly outcrop, waterfalls running over the exposed shale in the hillside. All I could hear was birdsong - no man-made sounds at all. Tranquil, beautiful, and over all too quickly, as after a ten minute descent (taking it wasy on a bruised ankle) I was back in the car and heading for the next ascent of the day at Mynydd Marchywel.