1,000 Welsh P30s

Upon reaching the summit of Bryn y Fan (SN 931 885) on Saturday 15^th April 2017 as well as completing my 1,000^th Welsh P30 I also completed one of those hill ambitions that seem to come along from time to time, these usually take the form of self-imposed challenges and mine are more infrequent when compared to years ago, but upon completion they are no less enjoyable, in some ways this self-imposed challenge is a little more so as it has taken so many years to complete.

With Alex on the summit of Bryn y Fan.  Photo: Charlie Leventon

Outside of the higher Welsh Hewitts and Deweys the first hill I purposely bagged because it had 30m minimum prominence was in 2002, and as I started bagging Welsh Deweys in early 2000, it could be said that it has taken me 15 – 17 years to reach the magic 1,000 mark.

When the whole of Wales was mapped down to 30m prominence I thought it feasible to visit every P30 summit on the Welsh mainland and although I did not set out to do this, I did hold some form of inherent need to see how far I could make inroads into this list, so far it’s taken me to the 1,000 mark, hopefully there will be a few more to follow in the years to come.

The full set of the Welsh mainland P30s will one day be completed, but I certainly will not be the first person to do so, and although I will probably not complete this mammoth task, I will be happy enough to visit more summits and explore other beautiful areas of the country that I know as home.

By visiting so many hills in one relatively small country the sense of memory is somewhat joyous, it is hard to visualise every summit visited and every walk completed, but the overall memory is one of blurred images of beautiful and varied landscape and happy times spent with a multitude of people who I have shared this experience with along the way.

I reached the summit of Bryn y Fan with 13 others, many friends who I have shared my hill walking experiences over the years, including Alex Cameron who had just completed his 1,000 Welsh P30 an hour before we met and others who I had not visited a Welsh P30 with before.  We sat just below the summit on the leeward side of the chilly brisk wind and celebrated with bubbly and cake.

There’s always another hill to visit, and for me it is now time to turn my attention to an unfinished list of Welsh P15 hills that I have neglected over the last eight years, therefore the remaining Welsh P30s will now have to take a sharing role with their P15 counterparts.

My totals in the 100m height bands in reaching 1,000 Welsh P30s are given below:

30m – below 100m	30 hills
100m	47 hills
200m	90 hills
300m (Y Trichant)	129 hills
400m (Y Pedwarau)	330 hills
500m	225 hills and complete
600m	82 hills and complete
700m	32 hills and complete
800m	19 hills and complete
900m	11 hills and complete
1000m	5 hills and complete

Myrddyn Phillips (April 2017)