OMM Elan Valley

Race: Original Mountain Marathon, Long Score Class, Day 2
Peaks: Drygarn Fawr, Gorllwyn
Area: Elan Valley, Mid Wales
Time/Pts/Position: 5:04/255pts (58/190)
Frequent squally gusts interrupted sleep, but a reasonably comfortable night meant prospects looked good. After getting the map, we headed immediately north-west then south over Waun Lydan to Esgair Ganol and finally up to the top of Drygarn Fawr. This was a long haul, but had an appealing and obvious logic: right up to the highpoint of the range. It's a fine, remote peak (last visited 6 years ago?) and it was good to be up here, dibbing the control right on the summit. A heavy shower blew up as we ran down the ridge out east to an extensive and energy-sapping bog (Carnau). After picking up some points, we were intent on getting the 50 pointer at the far end of the remote spur of Esgair Ffraith. Pleasingly, the terrain was nowhere near as bad as we'd expected (I thought it would be a real fight through the tussocks) and we retraced our steps back to Carnau to the CP below Gorllwyn. From here, the obvious route was to follow the north side of the ridge - and the line-class runners - via two CPs to a final big value checkpoint at the end of the spur down from Gamriw (also visited years ago with Steve). The weather cleared superbly at this point - great sunny views down to Rhayader and beyond. A tremendous and exhilarating final descent down the steep spur into Llanwrthwl. A fantastic way to finish - quite weird to be finishing somewhere so familar, but really good. We had far too much time left (almost an hour!), and obviously should have gone for the points south of Gorllwyn, but it was still another good day - and we did gain some places, squeezing into the top third of the field.