Erwood

The name is a corruption of the Welsh for ford, and that is the whole reason there is anything here.

The Wye at Erwood is wide and, at the right state of water, crossable. For centuries drovers brought cattle down to this point and swam them over on their way east, and the village grew round the trade in the way that such places did: an inn, a smithy, a few houses, and a great deal of seasonal traffic.

A ferry operated until a bridge was built, and the drove road climbing away east towards the Wye's watershed and Herefordshire is still traceable.

The railway

The Mid-Wales Railway came down the valley in 1864 and gave Erwood a station.

It closed with the rest of the line on the last day of 1962. The buildings survived, and since the 1980s Erwood Station has been a craft centre and gallery, with the platform, the signal box and some rolling stock in place around it.

It is a genuinely good gallery rather than a gift shop with a train theme, and it is one of the more successful reuses of a closed Welsh station.

Around

The middle Wye between Builth and Glasbury is one of the quieter and better stretches of the river, and Erwood sits in the middle of it.

Aberedw, three miles north, has a ruined castle above the river and a rocky gorge, and it is where Llywelyn ap Gruffudd is traditionally said to have sheltered in the days before his death in December 1282.

Llandeilo Graban, up on the hill west of the village, has a church with a carved wooden dragon in the tower and a very good view.

Francis Kilvert knew this stretch of the valley well and it appears in the diary repeatedly.

Now

A small village on the A470 with a pub, a shop and the station gallery. It is easy to drive through without stopping, which is a mistake mainly because of the gallery.