I'm woken by the sun coming up at just after 5am and a light pattering of rain. I was secretly quite pleased, as I wanted to put the tent through its paces, and anyway there's something rather comforting about being in a warm tent while the weather comes down outside. I turned over and drifted back to sleep for a couple of hours, hoping that it would've slackened by then and I could take the tent down in the dry. When I came back to consciousness it was about half seven, and the rain had consolidated into a steady, heavier drumming on the flysheet. Clearly this was not ideal conditions for striking camp, so after casting around a bit to make sure there were no major leaks - everything seemed to be bone dry, quite a relief as I was convinced I'd managed to make some tiny holes in the groundsheet by pitching the tent over some holly leaves in the New Forest - I got wrapped myself back in my sleeping bag and slept some more.

Cut forward a couple of hours and now the weather has become impossible to ignore. A ferocious wind has sprung up from the east, and I can hear heavy horizontal rain spattering with incredible force against just one side of the tent. I can't really understand why such a lot of rain is coming from the east - I thought all this sort of weather came from the sea to the west in Wales! The wind is gusting powerfully enough to make the tent lurch alarmingly, and every few second the inner tent is compressed almost against my face, before the resistant poles make it spring back into shape. I gather all my possessions aways from the east side of the tent, and hurriedly search around for evidence of leakage - but amazingly, even after a couple of stormy hours, the worst I'd got is a very light spray of water from the flysheet when the wind gusted particularly strongly. Investigation of the porch revealed that while my shoes hadn't blown away (something I was actually worried about) the constant wind had moved the flysheet over them, so they'd been exposed to the rain for hours. Bugger! For now the tent was holding up well, but being pitched on the highest ridge for some distance around during a storm is really not a great position - I was being constantly buffetted by the strongest wind, and if lightening became a possibility I couldn't really be in a worse plasce.

This persisted for a good couple more hours, while I sat bunched up in the highest part of the tent. Every time I think I hear the rain slackening, an alarming gust hits and the whole tent rocks. The situation is a little alarming: for now I am reasonably safe and not at all cold in my sleeping bag, but striking camp is looking increasingly difficult, and the tent is taking a battering. What if a pole suddenly snaps? I have nothing to really repare it with. What if a thunderstorm materialises? Will I be stuck on top of Fan Nedd all day and all night? At least I have a good amount of food, and endless water...

At midday I'd had enough and decided to head out for a recce. I put on all my clothes, my waterproof pac-in-mac thing and cycling gloves, and put my feet in plastic bags and then my shoes (I was quite pleased with these rubbish homemade gaters - and they worked too, for a while) - then shoved myself outside. It's often said that the rain always sounds twice as bad as it is inside a tent - I can report here that it was basically as bad. 30 seconds of exposure and one side of my trousers were soaked. Rain was running in constant rivulets down the east side of the flysheet. I sheepishly dived back inside.

At 12.30 I realised the situation had become ridiculous, and I needed to get off the mountain. I ate my remaining pizza, folded everything away and prepared my homemade pack in the porch, making sure my down bag was well wrapped up. Waiting for lull and steeling myself, I jumped out the entrance and began the military operation of taking down the duolite. Fortunately, the tent is really a doddle to pitch and put away. You can take out all the poles first, flattening the tent and stowing the poles safely. I got the pegs out as quickly as I could, sitting on the tent and almost losing it to the wind at one point. Some frenzied shoving got it back in the bag, and I reconsituted my pack and lashed everything to the front. With my dark glasses on and hood up, I must have cut a very strange figure as I made my way rather blindly to the north. Visibility was terrible: it took me a while to find the path I'd come up, which was now a small stream, and I certainly couldn't see the wall leading back to the road. Fortunately it was hard to go wrong, as long as I went north and down. Getting off the ridge immediately sheltered me from the rain and things felt much less urgent - I genuinely thought there might be a risk of exposure up on the mountain.

I reached the road safely, and squelched back down to the valley to collect my bike. In these situations I always tend to imagine the worst case scenario, and for some reason they always make me laugh. For some reason I thought it would be hilarious if someone had nicked my bike, in the middle of a stormy and remote Welsh valley. I guess it would have made a good story, anyway. Needless to say that the worst had not happened, and there was my faithful machine, with its pannier bags soaked but looking wonderfully clean. Down in the valley it was just barely drizzling!

After loading up the panniers, one of which was actually carrying 100ml of rain water, I pushed the bike back up the hill to the south. Part of the way I rode, and it did feel pretty good to be back in the saddle and generating heat. This biking/hiking combination has its advantages... Once I'd regained the car park I could cycle off in ernest, rather slowly fighting the headwind blowing the rain into my face like little missiles - sunglasses make a good windshield, and the visibility was already so bad what did it matter to lose a bit more? On the high, windswept (and probably very beautiful, if I could see any of the scenery) road south to the village of Ystradfellte I saw no cars, and only one other soul - a solitary army guy, walking determinedly in the other direction and understandably looking pretty pissed off.

I desperately wanted somewhere to stop and get a hot drink, but there seemed to little open in the village. The best I could find was an amazing local shop, right out of how you imagine remote bits of Wales. It was an old independent petrol station with two old fashioned, uncovered pumps and seemed to be pretty derelict. There was a hand painted sign indicating a shop was there - I almost continued on, thinking it must have closed years ago - then noticed there was a light in the bungalow behind the fence. It turned out that the end of this guys house was also a local shop, selling all sorts of newsagent-y things. I bought some chocolate with a very damp £20 note (sorry) and was very glad of the energy boost.

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The cruise down to Pontneddfechan on the edge of the National Park was uneventful - apart from the slow deterioration of my brakes. I'd noticed this the day before, but the soaking my bike had received overnight seemed to exacerbate the problem considerably. It got to the point when during an descent I applied both brakes fully, and was still accelerating - this was a bit disconcerting, so say the least, and I had to really take care on the downhills, of which there were many. It didn't seem to be the pads themselves, but the cable seemed to have lost some of its tension, and I didn't want to fiddle about and risk breaking it completely. Anyway, I arrived in Glynneath unscathed and determined to get to the south as quickly as possible.

One problem I had was my road map had basically dissolved, after getting inadvertently soaked through the fabric of my bar bag. My aim was to get to Neath, where there was a train station that would at least take me to Swansea, or maybe even allow me to travel direct to the east - whatever would get me out the rain as quickly as possible! Before it dissolved, I'd noted that the B4242 ran down the valley parallel to the dual-carriageway A465, and would be a good option to get to Neath. Locating it much of a problem, although it was a faster road than I expected and I was pedelling fast at this point. So it was with some relief that I saw what looked like a cycle path next to the unambiguously-named Neath canal!

A few words on this trail. First, it really is a great thing to have, and on a nice day would be by far the most preferable and pleasant way to get up the valley. On the other hand, some of the design decisions in its construction are pretty irritating. On the upper part of the path, the trail stops without warning, and without indicating where you can rejoing the canal. I tried to continue on down small paths that seemed to be the right continuation, and ended up with my poor heavily laden hybrid sunk deep in mud. This meant I just took the B road in frustration for considerable chunks of the way, joining the canal (which is always nearby) when the path looked good. As you near Neath, the surface improves, but there are still no signs (I was not even 100% sure I was going to Neath). There are also these metal bike gates - which are supposed to admit bikes, but were just way to short for mine. To get it through, I had to lift it vertical and pivot it around, something that quickly got old after the fourth time in two miles. At least, I assume they were bike gates - for all I know they're actually designed to prevent bikes getting on the path - they certainly seemed effective at that!

With wet feet and soaking clothes, this messing about did not improve my mood, and most of the last few miles is a bit of a blur. Most of what I remember about Neath is it has a beasting one way system that took me right around the town to get to the train station (I was genuinely totally disorientated when I arrived!), and that it looked a bit, well, rough (sorry Neath - I'm sure it has its good parts and looks a lot better in the sunshine).

At least I was in luck with the trains - one was leaving in 10 minutes, and would take me all the way to Didcot on my original ticket. I lept aboard and spent the three hour journey slowly warming up, sipping hot chocolate and watching the novel sights of South Wales slip by.