Guide

Walking in Powys

This site covers what you are looking at. Routes, distances and access are on Wales Walks, which is run by the same people.

Powys Heritage is about what happened in a place. It does not publish walking routes, and there is a reason for that.

Turn-by-turn directions for upland Wales go out of date, and an out-of-date direction on a mountain is worse than no direction at all. Stiles are removed, permissive routes lapse, forestry blocks are felled and replanted, and rivers move. Publishing a route that was correct three years ago and letting somebody follow it in fog is not a service.

Wales Walks is the companion site, run by the same organisation. It began as a Powys resource and now covers the whole of Wales, with several hundred routes in the old Powys counties alone and the access and safety information kept current. Where an article here has a route on it, there is a direct link in the related section at the foot of the page.

The national trails

Three long-distance routes cross Powys.

Offa's Dyke Path runs 177 miles from Sedbury to Prestatyn, entering the county in the south near Hay and following the border north through Knighton, which sits at roughly the midpoint and holds the trail's interpretation centre.

Glyndŵr's Way runs 135 miles in a loop from Knighton to Machynlleth and back to Welshpool, almost entirely within Powys and almost entirely on high ground.

The Wye Valley Walk follows the river from Plynlimon down through Rhayader, Builth and Hay towards Chepstow.

Access

Rights of way, open access land and permissive routes are three different things and only the first two carry a legal right.

Open access under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act covers most Powys mountain, moor, heath and down, and it can be closed for up to 28 days a year at the landowner's discretion, plus longer for land management or fire risk.

The Epynt Way around the Sennybridge Training Area is permissive, not a right of way, and it depends on the firing schedule. Red flags mean live firing. That is not advisory.

A great many sites described on this site are on private land and are not accessible at all. Mentioning a place here is never a statement that you can go and stand in it.

Common sense on the hill

The Bannau Brycheiniog and the Berwyn are not high by international standards and both kill people regularly, generally through a combination of weather, navigation and optimism.

Take a map and compass and be able to use them. Phone signal across most of central Powys is unreliable and battery life in cold weather is worse than people expect. Tell somebody where you are going.

Streams in this county rise very fast. A crossing that is ankle deep in the morning can be impassable by afternoon after rain on the tops that you never saw.