Detour #159: The Vale of Ewyas is Wales' best-kept secret
The glorious Gospel Pass
Sitting at the edge of the Brecon Beacons this stunning valley is missed by most travellers when it should be savoured, says an emotional Simon Heptinstall.
Imagine driving slowly through a remote hidden valley, miles from the nearest town. Cruise along the narrow winding road, under sunshine strobing through the leaves of overhanging trees. You’re following a bubbling, frothy, rocky river, flanked by statuesque green mountains.
Welcome to the beautiful Vale of Ewyas, one of the best secret drives in the UK.
Now, of course I’m going to tell you all the brilliant things about it and how to find where the drive starts – but beware, because I’m also going to have a bit of a rant.
That’s because the Vale of Ewyas, sometimes also called Llanthony Valley, is a cruelly neglected wonder of the British landscape.
Yes it’s brilliant that the few of us in the know can go there and it’s always pretty empty. While you can drive along a deserted heavenly valley in south east Wales there will be scores more cars waiting in line to pay £50 to take their family round a man-made garden or dainty stately home nearby. They’ve never heard of the Vale of Ewyas. And probably never will.
So this is a hymn of praise for what was once a tiny secret independent kingdom. And it’s also a psalm of lament for the way our travel choices have become dominated by money and the internet.
I’ll start with the praise: Llanthony is one of the very best places to visit in southern Britain.
This is a driving route that’s just made for the dedicated Detourist. The unique attractions of driving along this lovely largely unheard-of stretch of road include:
· Britain’s biggest ancient monument and probably Europe’s too: the 1,300-year-old Offa’s Dyke, an eight-foot-high, 150-mile long earth wall built by thousands of Saxons.
· The Gospel Pass, at 1,800ft, the highest road in southern Britain. The name comes from the time crusading knights marched through, raising funds on their way to fight infidels.
· The serious and photogenic peaks of Waun Fach (2,661ft) and Hay Bluff (2,221ft), which also forms the current English border.
· And the real scenic jewel of the valley: Llanthony Priory, a poetically picturesque ruin where wild white horses graze between delicate 12th century carved stone arches. JMW Turner’s painting of it is better known than the real thing. Best of all, there’s now a quirky restaurant and bar right in the crypt of the old abbey.
Llanthony Priory
You’ll easily find the Vale of Ewyas, north of the lovely old border town of Abergavenney. Turn off the A465 at the amazingly-named Llanvihangel Crucorney and follow little lanes with brown signs pointing to Llanthony Priory.
The drive gets better the deeper into the valley you go. For 15 miles this leafy backroad follows the River Honddu through a wide, steep-sided valley with not a town or village in sight.
Peversely, it’s so nice it makes me cross. This place is just three hours from London, free to get in, has lots of parking and is always open. I’m a professional travel writer and it’s one of the most picturesque places I’ve been... in the world. Yet a web search throws up nothing more than a few obscure walking routes. Llanthony is an old-school, pre-internet attraction. It has no marketing profile.
No-one has paid anyone to create a sexy website about the Vale of Ewyas. There’s no content team churning out Search-Engine-Optimised copy. There’s not even a Tik Tok, Facebook or Insta page.
People used to look at road atlases and talk about detours to sights like these, without having to be prompted by Ten Cool Places To Chill This Summer or You Won’t Believe Which Stars Hang Out at this Bar! In the age of click-bait travel, forgotten landscapes are being more and more forgotten.
Hopefully this Detour piece will lure some of you to visit. Whatever you’re driving, you’ll barely get into top gear – but in return you’ll get to see so much.
Look out for the pretty St Mary’s chapel, one of the smallest churches in Britain; the remote home of design pioneer Eric Gill; and the slopes that were the setting for Bruce Chatwin’s best-seller and subsequent film On Black Hill.
It’s such a hidden and enclosed slot in the landscape you can see how Ewyas was once a tiny independent kingdom that flourished after the Romans left Britain.
Today it’s very different though. There’s no-one with a big business to promote, to finance press-trips or a social media campaign. There’s no advertising budget. Compared to, say, Clarks Shopping Village in Street, Somerset, the concrete bars and expensive attractions of Cardiff Bay, or the over-hyped chain stores of Bath, it hardly seems to exist in the cyberworld.
I pondered all that last time I parked in a quiet paddock right next to the River Honddu. Red kites circled overhead and an old lady sold cakes and tea from a caravan. Maybe if there was a TV celebrity restaurant people would have heard of Ewyas.
It was a blazing sunny day and I sat in the shade of my driver’s seat, wondering where everyone has gone instead. It’s largely to places like shops, theme parks, over-promoted ‘events’, and generally expensive things where lots of other people are going too.
Many more people are window-shopping for bogus bargains in shiny ‘discount malls’ than exploring some of the best countryside in Europe. Somewhere as good as Llanthony is almost deserted on a sunny Sunday but I drove past a long queue waiting to park at a new out-of-town shopping complex near Newport.
Sorry, I’ve gone a bit serious writing this. The story of Llanthony seems to demonstrate the way people’s travel decisions are now so commercially led.
Detour’s website is like King Cnut, trying to turn back that tide of bad travel decisions. Maybe I’m just grumpy because I haven’t got any other work today. Most editors want copy that sells adverts, not eulogises secret country roads and I am feeling like a neglected old thing from another era. A bit like a human version of Llanthony.
Words Simon Heptinstall Twitter | Instagram
Photography Shutterstock
