Fan y Big

About Fan y Big

Fan y Big is a subsidiary summit of Waun Rydd in the Bannau Brycheiniog of southern Powys. Rather than being climbed for itself, it is commonly taken in as part of the Horseshoe Walk, the traverse linking the four main peaks of the Brecon Beacons.

Background written from facts in the Wikipedia article on Fan y Big (CC BY-SA 4.0). Heights, prominence and grid references come from the Database of British & Irish Hills, not from Wikipedia.

Access rights here

General position for Wales — local byelaws, seasonal restrictions and closures can override it. Full details: access rights in Wales · check another location.

Daylight at this summit today

Sunrise

—

Sunset

—

Daylight

—

Civil twilight ends

—

Computed astronomically for 51.876, -3.401. Plan your finish with the daylight safety planner.

Finding the summit

The recorded summit point is no feature. On broad or flat summits the obvious cairn is not always the true high point.

Survey method

obvious summit/Trimble GeoXH 6000

Record revised

16-Jul-18

Drop measured from

SO037198 · 688.2 m

Survey notes are field observations recorded in the Database of British & Irish Hills (v18.3, CC BY 4.0) by the hill-surveying community.

Long-distance paths past this hill

One waymarked long-distance route runs within 2.5 km of the summit — useful if you are linking this hill into a longer walk, or want a made path for the approach.

Route lines © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL); distance from the summit computed by OpenFell.

Which hill this one belongs to

Fan y Big is not counted as an independent hill in its own right. In prominence terms it belongs to Waun Rydd (769 m) — the nearest Marilyn you can reach from this summit without first dropping below its key col, 688 m.

Grouping is by prominence alone: a summit belongs to the nearest higher Marilyn it connects to without a deeper intervening col. Over a large massif that can gather hills no one would walk in a single day, and which few would describe as parts of the same mountain — it is a measure of independence, not a suggested route.

Nearest listed peaks