Llangurig

Llangurig sits where the road west to Aberystwyth leaves the road north to Llanidloes and Newtown, a few miles below the source of the Wye on Plynlimon.

That junction is the village. Drovers used it, coaches used it, and the A44 and A470 use it now, which means a settlement of a few hundred people has traffic out of all proportion to its size.

Llangurig is often described as the highest village in Wales.

The church

St Curig's is medieval in origin — the dedication is to an early Welsh saint — and was substantially restored in the 1870s at the expense of a wealthy benefactor.

That restoration was thorough to the point of controversy. Much of what you see is Victorian, though fragments of the medieval screen and some earlier fabric survive, and the roof retains old timbers.

It is a good example of a phenomenon worth understanding across Powys: a great many parish churches were effectively rebuilt between 1850 and 1890, and the question of what is medieval and what is Victorian imitation of medieval is one you should ask in every one of them. The Victorian work is often excellent. It is rarely what the guidebook implies.

The country

North and west of the village the ground rises into the Plynlimon massif and the Hafren Forest, and it is genuinely empty. The Severn and the Wye both rise within a few miles of here on the same hill, and then run in opposite directions for the length of Wales.

South-east is the Elan country and the reservoirs.

This is some of the most thinly populated ground in southern Britain, and it was thinly populated before the plantations went in. What settlement there was ran along the valleys.

Around

Llanidloes is five miles north-east. The mountain road to Cwmystwyth and the Elan Valley leaves from near here and is one of the great drives in Wales, single track, high and exposed, with the old lead workings at Cwmystwyth at the far end.

The Wye Valley Walk starts on Plynlimon above the village.