Feeling free but also fearful

In this extract from award-winning poet Natalie Holborow's new book 'Wild Running', she follows a trail through the Brecon Beacons in Wales while reflecting on women's safety

- Natalie Holborow

The Corn Du, Pen y Fan, Cribyn and Fan y Big loop is spectacularly, beautifully and horribly brutal.

It's essentially a really long assault on your legs, disguised as a scenic jaunt through the Brecon Beacons' finest ridgelines.

It's a gentle incline through Taf Fechan Forest. We're going at a steady pace, our strides short, and my pigtails bouncing under my woolly hat (my mother, whenever she sees me like this postThe mist becomes thicker, obscuring the valley below, so there’s no longer any point in stopping to take photographs (or pretend to, if only to catch my breath). There’s a wooden fence we reach out to grip, which has tilted almost horizontally outwards from all the other hikers and runners clinging to it over time. A thin sheen of ice clings to a warning sign. Whatever it’s telling us, we probably already know.

By now, frost is beginning to form on our woolly hats like crusted salt. We eventually agree to slow to a walk to the summit; the quad-burn and the face-freeze is too much. The path clambers, a restless muscle of earth and stone, twisting its spine towards the sky. The rock face is sheer and slippery; years of climbing have left the land peeled open to the icy winds. It’s eerie, muffled and close, my breath a small ghost in the frozen air. We stop, stretch and breathe deeply.

Filling the lungs is tough to do up here (that’s my excuse, anyway).