Pen y Fan Challenge Weekend

At Butterfly Data we have now got into the annual tradition of getting all the staff together for a weekend away in the Spring to go and climb a  mountain somewhere. In the first year we went up Snowdon and last year we went up Scafell Pike. This year we decided to head down to South Wales and climb Pen y Fan, which while having markedly less height provided its own challenges!

We all stayed together in a bunkhouse which provided its own benefits and challenges. The team all got stuck in cooking for each other, with certain health-conscious staff subjecting everyone to strange and supposedly healthy ingredients such as “spirulina” and “beetroot”. The communal space gave a chance to hang out, play board games (this author crushed the competition at Ticket to Ride) and be serenaded  played to on the guitar by one of the directors. 

We were lucky enough on the actual walk itself to be blessed with good weather giving us wonderful views across the Bannau Brycheiniog. However the bad weather of the previous few weeks meant it was very boggy underfoot with several of us discovering our shoes weren’t quite as waterproof as we liked. We did almost all of the elevation in the first couple of kilometres from the bunk house, including a section which was at a 30% incline, which almost finished off several of us. However, we enjoyed the sense of achievement once we made it to the top. Check out our route on Strava here.

These weekends give the team a great chance to hang out in a social environment, fostering a great sense of community which has always been a part of what makes Butterfly Data a great place to work. We look forward to seeing which mountains we climb both practically and metaphorically next year.