Mid Wales

Over the last few days we have travelled through some beautiful countryside with breathtaking views. The rivers are very low and gurgle over the rocks, but despite the lack of rain the flowers are in perfect condition and the hedges, trees and grassy fields are a lovely vibrant green. I have never been into the Welsh mountains in Springtime before and it’s so fresh and green and alive with new born lambs, it’s almost magical.

Anyway, we decided to head towards the Elan Valley and took a minor road through the Black Mountains. It went through the Vale Of Ewyas for most of the way and the it was delightful to be able to see the different colours in the road side verges, Stitchwort, Celandine, Vipers Bugloss, Bluebells and of course the lovely yellow primrose.

The valley floor was all pasture with cows, sheep and lambs, which gave way to the steep slopes of the mountains where the soft green changed to that lovely golden bracken colour, dotted with the soft grey of the rock. I always find myself with conflicting wishes, sitting in the valley looking up I want to be climbing up the mountain looking down into the valley but when I’m on top I want to be in the valley sitting by the stream looking up at the magnificence of the crags, some people can never be satisfied! I actually feel very privileged to be able to be in that position especially in one of the world’s most precious places.

It was a lovely drive but we decided to take to the hills in search of a night halt. I managed to navigate Pat into one of the narrower roads and for a mile it was touch and go whether we could squeeze through but eventually we joined a much wider road, at least here there was a grass verge for passing oncoming vehicles and we made good time again.

The road climbed gently through the hills, it was pure moorland up here, hardy grass and plenty of scenery consisting of steep sided hills. It was also very busy and parking was at a premium so we continued ever onwards and upwards. At last having taken another narrow turning, we left the crowds behind and found a scruffy gravel patch that was level, with lovely views. The local sheep came to visit but were a bit shy of strangers and didn’t even partake of the broccoli I offered them!

It was a very quiet night, I think the one and only car passed us about 7.30 pm so we were up bright and early in the low cloud (we do insist in going onto high ground) and headed downhill. By 8 o’clock we were walking around Builth Wells.

Builth Wells is a small town but it has a lot of history and when we found a life size statue of a big black welsh bull we decided that Builth must be Celtic or Welsh for Bull - how wrong can you be? The phrase that comes to mind here is ‘Assume - it makes an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’. Of course a bit of research and we find that Builth in Welsh is Buallt and this originally referred to an area of land in the ancient Welsh administrative system. This Buallt Hundred or Cantref (olde englishe) was about 174 square miles and the River Wye running through Builth Wells was one of the boundary edges. Buallt broken down into Bu and Allt can be translated from Welsh into English as ‘The Wild Ox of the Wooded Slope’. So after all that, it does have some meaning to the origin of the town.

However, the bronze statue was modelled on a prize winning Bull in 1992 and 2002 at the Royal Welsh Show. Caerynwch Tywysog 6th (an unusual name for a bull!) was owned by a local farmer and the sculptor of the 1.5 tonnes statue was also local. It’s nice to visit these small towns and realise that instead of paying out huge sums to artists from afar the local people are employed for these projects.

The High Street running the length of the town was much the same as other towns regarding shops but at the corner of an alleyway an artist had obviously been at work. We couldn’t find any information on who, why and when so perhaps a frustrated artist lives in the building? It’s a fantastic piece of art and well thought out. The door is solid and presumably leads to an inside room and the Dragon was lovely, laying there as good as gold and fast asleep. This is what’s called finding dragons, my chase is at an end? No, I don’t think so! Now I need to find the rest of her relatives. There are always more around the next corner.

Please have a good look at the artwork, we think it was acrylics and all the stone work has been hand painted on flat cement, the window frame as well as the cat, look at the tree trunk which is a cleverly disguised electrical conduit. The smallest of details has been included right down to the use of an actual iron ring embedded into the wall and if you look closely you will notice that the dragon is attached to it by a chain.

Builth must be a town of pictures because on every other shop doorway or lamp post 'Julie’s' friends had pinned pictures of her at various ages. She had just had a birthday but unfortunately none of the pictures gave her age, but from the latest pictures probably about 18. I bet she was embarrassed the morning after!

We left Builth and 'Julie' with her hangover and headed for the Elan Valley, the journey through the valley was beautiful, narrow lanes with banks covered in the by now familiar white Stitchwort, Bluebells and primroses. The trees were that early Spring green and you can still see through the gossamer like foliage. We followed the road along the Elan Valley to the Claerwen reservoir and ended up parked at the bottom of the dam.

The dam wall is 240 feet high and has tonnes and tonnes of concrete in it which has been faced with masonry and blue brick. Standing beneath it you feel very, very small and insignificant with the frightening thought of how much water would come pouring through if it gave way. I’ve always though dams were built with a massive slope either water side or valley side, like the one at Ladybower in Derbyshire. This one though is almost vertical both sides according to the information board and it’s not got a huge curve on in like the Hoover dam in America (although that one’s a bit bigger) so where it gets it’s strength from I don’t know, but I’m not a stress engineer.

It was a lovely peaceful spot and we spent the rest of the day parked up reading, walking, talking to birders and generally relaxing in the beautiful countryside. We were shown where a Peregrin Falcon was perched, guarding the nest site on a craggy outcrop of rock and also told where to find a Red Kite’s nest that you could look down and see Mum patiently sitting on her eggs. We also got some fantastic views of Dad perched not far away and at times he would glide over our heads. These were the best views of Red Kite’s we have ever had.

From the Dam wall we saw Redstarts and Willow Warblers, Chaffinches were singing their hearts out and generally it was a busy area for wildlife.

We met up with Helen and Colin from Birmingham on the Dam and were sharing views of the wildlife and talking about our likes and dislikes. Helen is waiting for Colin to retire and they are looking forward to taking up bird watching and travelling. Our best advice to them was ‘as soon as you can, it’s a great way of life’.

Next day I was sat spinning wool in the sunshine and we met Harry and Angela. They’ve got a D reg Autosleeper and have started wild camping and are having a lovely time. Angela has fallen in love with the hills of Mid Wales and they have time to visit whenever they like. We enjoyed swapping ideas and stories with each other and also learning of new places to visit.

The weather was still gorgeous, bright sunshine but a cold wind which we ignored. There’s a visitor centre in Elan Village and we stopped for a look around. The history of the three dams is shown and all the facts and figures of how much concrete, how much water, where it goes etc is shown. The one fact that I remember is the water feeds Birmingham and the 73 mile long pipeline is on a gradient that falls just enough to use gravity to get it to the treatment plant at Birmingham. The rest of the figures are just a blur and anyway I can’t always envisage how much a million cubic feet of water is!

It’s a lovely place for a picnic and a walk, again at the bottom of one of the dams, Caban Coch, but it feels safe! We walked down through the woods into the village. The village was built to house the navvies working on the dams and also their families. Shops, schools and churches were all included. The working sites were too far into the hills for the workers to be housed at Rhayader and anyway the town could not have accommodated them all.


There are only a few houses left in the village and we ended up walking back along the river. It’s a typical mountain river bubbling over rocks and sneaking around boulders, slow lazy pools which then run frantically over the pebbly bottom. I would love to be able to follow water on it’s path in these type of rivers. They never seem too deep and dangerous but we all know how looks can be deceiving. I did manage to hop over some boulders to get towards the middle of the river and sit posing for a time, that is until I was called back to land for lunch. It’s a beautiful setting for a picnic, sunlight bouncing off the water with a backdrop of mountains, coloured with the bracken and rock screes.


All good things come to an end and our pot noodles were no exception so we moved on towards another reservoir we’d found on the map. I never tire of travelling over mountains and hills and through green sided valleys, especially this time of year, and Wales has an abundance of this type of scenery.

So, still on narrow lanes we came across a Forestry Commission car park at ‘The Arch’.
The Arch itself was built across the road to commemorate King George III’s Golden Jubilee in 1810. It was the owner of the Hafod estate, Thomas Johnes who commissioned it, but to me it seems to be in the middle of nowhere and pointless. Maybe in 1810 it could be seen from the manor house and perhaps spanned the main driveway to the house.

There are three walks marked up from the car park, the red route, the white route and the blue route. We took the white route (the shortest) which passed through woodland with 200 hundred year old beech trees. They were magnificent reaching straight up to the sky, their grey trunks straight and solid, the green canopy not quite dense enough to block out the light was like a filigree of green silk. The undergrowth was still managing to cling on with a few flowers and there were some fungi on the dead wood.

The next day we finally arrived at Llyn Clywedog and took the lane around the back. There are some fantastic grassy pull in’s and we found a spot where I could sit spinning with the lake 3 steps away. As always in this area the mountain scenery was beautiful and reflected in the lake, a most perfect spinning spot.


Lln Clywedog is another reservoir and below the dam are the remains of the Bryn Tail Lead Mine. Severn Trent have established several footpaths around the lake and one takes in the Lead Mine. The lake is very beautiful and is said to be the best in Wales by some. I’m not ready to pass judgement yet, I’d like to see all the others first.

We had lunch in ‘The Lookout’ a car park on one of the higher points around the lake in which Severn Trent have made a viewing area where you can see Red Kites, Buzzards as well as Canada Geese and other species of birds. Although we didn’t see any there are also Squirrels, Polecats and voles, a brilliant area for wildlife as well as the stunning views.

Sadly we had to move on and our last night out this trip was scheduled for the Long Mynd. This is where my map reading gets really interesting. I decided to take him across country, down roads we’d never visited before and boy did I find some intriguing lanes. On the way we stopped for a stroll around Newtown, there’s a nice wool shop, and this time we visited the Textile Museum. It was really interesting, the museum is in a row of terraced cottages and takes in 3 of the houses. The ground floor shows the living and eating area of the families, the first floor is made up into the sleeping area and the third floor is one huge room that spans all three cottages and is where the weaving looms were worked. I was fascinated because I’ve thought that the industrial sized looms were always in a factory setting with workers going home at the end of the day, but here home was below the ‘factory’. The wooden floors had the dips where feet have walked back and forth over the years at the looms and I was intrigued with how many machines there would have been . The noise downstairs must have been dreadful, it’s a good job they didn’t work nights!

They also had wool carding desks, this is the first time I’ve seen one, it’s a bit like our old school desks, you know the ones where the wooden seat was joined to the table. This one though had a carding board with spikes on it nailed to the lid and raw fleece was kept in the desk and drawn through a hole at the front. Carding would still have been difficult, but as I have spent hours with two hand carders I know the desk type would be easier on the arms and wrists. The top floor was also part of the ‘factory’ but we didn’t have enough parking time to do the whole thing so a return visit is in order.

Continuing on our way we returned to the narrow lanes, narrow as in touching the banks on both sides and this time it seemed to go on for miles, we could see a massive hill in front of us and that’s where the road went. Up and up but thankfully once out of the valley the ground either side was flat and passing was possible. We were lucky, we didn’t meet anyone. We ended up on the highest point above Church Stretton and dined amongst the heather.

It was getting late and the wind was so strong we decided to move to a lower altitude where we could get a little shelter.

It has been a fantastic few days, lonely places, spectacular scenery, plenty of sunshine and blue skies and the chance to stand and stare, something we should all do more of.