Walk to
locate WW2 LANCASTER BOMBER W4929 wreck site in the
Brecon Beacons (Western Fans).
Tuesday 5 March 2002 in company of Paul Saunders.
Paul arrived at about 9.30am on Tuesday 5 March. It was our intention to take a walk on the Western beacons in the area of Foel Darw. Our starting point was the little car park in the Forestry Commission property at SN 82001 27133. It was a lovely sunny day, but a bit on the cold side due to a cold wind.
Our objective was to locate and photograph the two stone circles at SN 81983 25881 just west of Foel Darw, then we would proceed to the wreck site of the LANCASTER Bomber W4929 which crashed on 5 September 1943 North of Fan Foel.
leaving the car park, we followed the infant River Usk for about 1 Km then went south-east following the western side of Nant Tarw. Eventually we spotted first, the cairn which is close to the stone circles, then, the circles became evident. Here are two sets of stone "circles" one of which is an ellipse. The stones comprising the circles stand about 2 feet high, some are partly buried, but the rings are easily discernible. The cairn is at SN 81983 25881 and the ellipse at SN 81878 25847. The circle is just a few metres east of the ellipse. One has to consider if there was any particular significance attached to the cairn built so close to the circles. Having taken sufficient photographs, we now turned our attention to the further object of our walk - the location of the memorial to the ill-fated crew of the Lancaster bomber.
(Photo links. Cairn Ellipse Circle.)
A good look at our map was almost all we needed to get a pretty good indication of the bearing we needed. The topography of the area - a long sloping stretch of rising moorland with Fan Foel and Fan Brecheiniog in the background gave us our direction. We should aim for a spot some distance to the east of Fan Foel. The ground ahead appeared somewhat boggy so we ventured a bit to our right onto the ridge, and continued on our way. The walk at this point was a bit of an uphill slog, but the good side was the ever improving views to the north where the Usk reservoir was beginning to come into view. Some more photographs were taken as the light was excellent and the cloudscapes brilliant. We stopped for about 15 minutes for a cuppa, and were entertained by a pair of Red Kites quartering the ground, hunting for their lunch. Refreshed, we proceeded towards the wreck site. we had to skirt round a large fenced off patch of ground, an area of bad looking bog. The booklet "Aircraft crash sites" gave us a grid ref for the site as SN 828 238. this had been entered into our GPS and was the basis of our navigation to the site. Our instruments shoed us that our original estimate of the direction was indeed spot on and when about 200m from the site, we spotted the little memorial which was erected in the early 1990's at grid ref SN 82807 23885. Eight aircrew were lost in the accident. There were poppies and poppy wreaths laid - one laid by the Ammanford walking club. A large deep gash in the hillside about 20m long and 4m wide held several pieces of wreckage including the remains of a Merlin engine, twisted crank shaft, and propellor boss. There could be found small pieces of wreckage as far as 150m from the site.
Our return journey varied slightly from our outward route insofar as we decided to follow the path which runs between Twyn Perfedd and Foel Darw. This path is shown on the O.S. map and goes on to enter the Forestry at about SN831 261. From here we followed the Forestry track back to the car.
The weather today was excellent and contributed to a successful if not physically taxing walk in the wilds of the Western fans.