view from Carn Llidi
The St Davids Walk
St Davids to Bangor
Equipment page
The Snowdon Horseshoe

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Obviously you will need all normal walking equipment: waterproof outer shell, warm inner clothes, a good pair of boots, a rucksack, a compass (or GPS - see below) and a waterproof map case. The notes which follow deal with special equipment particularly relevant to this terrain:

Maps

Do not consider trying this walk without a set of appropriate Ordnance Survey 1:25000 maps. They show lots of useful information like field boundaries (allowing you to see, for example, which side of a hedge the path officially runs) and are much more suitable for the walker than the 50000 series. These 25000 maps used to be very expensive but all the sheets you will need are now available either as Explorer or (for the most popular walking areas) the Outdoor Leisure Maps

You will need the following sheets::
Outdoor Leisure 35 North Pembrokeshire (double sided)
Explorer 185 Newcastle Emlyn
Explorer 186 Llandeilo & Brechfa Forest
Explorer 187 Llandovery (double sided)
Explorer 213 Aberystwyth and Cwm Rheidol
Outdoor Leisure 23 Snowdonia: Cadair Idris Area (double sided)
Outdoor Leisure 18 Snowdonia, Harlech and Bala (double sided)
Outdoor Leisure 17 Snowdonia and Conwy Valley (double sided)

These cover the whole walk from South to North. They may be obtained from any reputable bookshop.

A GPS

Navigation can be tricky in parts of rural Carmarthenshire where rights of way are exceedingly indistinct; also in the Elenydd between Llandovery and Machynlleth if you are unlucky enough to have very low cloud. A GPS device (Global Positioning System Device) is extremely useful. Prices are coming down all the time. (You can buy the new Garmin eTrex on the net for about £85.00,including postage from Canada).
A GPS device can be held in the hand and uses 24 American direction-satellites 11000 miles above the surface of the earth to fix your position to within about 5 metres. It gives an instant grid reference for your present position and, as you walk, will show you the current direction to any point whose grid reference has been previously keyed in. (It will remember these points, even when switched off) If you are a really good navigator it will probably never save your life but it will save time and remove uncertainty in thick forest and on featureless high ground in cloud.
For general information try Lowe's web-site If you consider buying one, an e-mail to Art Dalton will be helpful. His web-site, Prairie Geomatics, has pages for the new Garmin eTrex and for the very popular and rugged Garmin GPS12. Also comparisons between different Garmin and Magellan models.

Footbeds

If you are one of those lucky people who never get sore feet, skip this section. Otherwise seriously consider getting a pair of superfeet footbeds. These fit inside your boots and, if custom-made (by an amazing process involving having plastic bags fastened to your feet and all the air sucked out) result in your body weight being divided equally on all parts of the soles of your feet. I have personally never been so comfortable and will now never wear anything else. Unfortunately, there are not many places in the UK where you can get the custom-fitted ones. Try the web site of superfeet for more information or send an email to superfeet

A Brasherstick

Brashersticks are designed to reduce the load on your knees (and hips) and are intended to be used in pairs. Nevertheless, a single Brasherstick, carried collapsed in your rucksack, could prove extremely useful as a third point of support when crossing bog and turbulent streams.

A mobile phone

Although probably unusable in the valleys of central Wales, we found a mobile phone extremely useful. We were always able to contact friends, taxis, etc during the middle of the day when we had achieved some height.

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