Find the Andromeda Galaxy with the naked eye on a clear, moonless night, 2.5 million light years away

Hike to the summit of Pen y Fan (886m) and photograph the pre-dawn sky before sunrise breaks over the Black Mountains

Photograph the Milky Way over the ridge on a moonless night

The Brecon Beacons became an International Dark Sky Reserve in February 2013, and on a clear night the Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy and meteor showers are all visible from the park's Dark Sky Discovery Sites, such as Usk Reservoir, Crai Reservoir and the visitor centre at Libanus. Pen y Fan, the highest point in the reserve, is a popular place to watch the sunrise.

Bannau Brycheiniog International Dark Sky Reserve

Bannau Brycheiniog

From Bannau Brycheiniog to Cadair Idris: Pen y Fan and the dark skies, the bookshops of Hay and the Gospel Pass, red kites over the Elan Valley, and the mountain bike trails of Coed y Brenin.

Mid Wales: The Beacons to Cadair Idris

Fishguard

Nine nights in a loop from Fishguard: Cardigan Bay's dolphins, the steam railway to Devil's Bridge, red kites and dark skies in the Elan Valley, then Pen y Fan and the waterfalls of Bannau Brycheiniog.

Mid Wales and the Beacons from Fishguard

Climb Pen y Fan, at 886m the highest peak in South Wales, by the graded path from the Storey Arms, a 460m ascent

Find the reconstructed Bronze Age cairn with its central stone burial chamber on the summit, and its twin on nearby Corn Du

Walk on round the horseshoe to Cribyn and look back at the north face

Pen y Fan rises to 886m, the highest point in south Wales, and the graded path from the Storey Arms climbs 460m to it. On the summit is a reconstructed Bronze Age cairn with a stone burial chamber at its centre, and another on Corn Du beside it; the whole ridge falls away north in glacial cwms.

Pen y Fan: The Highest Peak in South Wales

Walk the Four Waterfalls Trail on the River Mellte and Afon Hepste at Ystradfellte, including Sgwd yr Eira, where a path leads behind the falls

Visit Henrhyd Falls, the 27m waterfall that is the tallest in South Wales, the entrance to the Batcave in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

See Porth yr Ogof, the cave where the Afon Mellte disappears underground

Around Ystradfellte the rivers of the southern Brecon Beacons drop through wooded gorges in a string of falls. The Four Waterfalls Trail follows the Mellte and the Hepste, and at Sgwd yr Eira the path goes behind the falling water. Nearby, Porth yr Ogof is the cave where the Mellte disappears underground, and Henrhyd Falls, 27m, the tallest waterfall in south Wales, was the entrance to the Batcave in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises (2012).

Waterfall Country: Sgwd yr Eira and Henrhyd Falls

See Adelina Patti's castle, now a hotel, from the country park

Walk up the valley to the show caves at Dan yr Ogof

The soprano Adelina Patti bought Craig y Nos in 1878 and built a private theatre inside it, with an auditorium floor that could be raised level to turn it into a ballroom. The country park around it runs along the Tawe under the Beacons, and the Dan yr Ogof caves are just up the valley road.

Craig y Nos: The Opera Singer's Castle in the Swansea Valley

Spend an afternoon in the bookshops of Hay

Visit Hay Castle, restored and opened to the public in 2022

Hay has more than twenty bookshops, is the National Book Town of Wales and holds the Hay Festival every spring. South of the town a single-track road climbs between Hay Bluff and Twmpa to the Gospel Pass at 549m, the highest road pass in Wales, then drops down the Vale of Ewyas past Llanthony Priory towards Abergavenny.

Hay-on-Wye and the Gospel Pass: Books and the Highest Road in Wales

Take the hour-long underground tour at Big Pit National Coal Museum in Blaenavon, 90m below ground, led by former miners, wearing a lamp and a 5kg battery on a waist belt

Visit the pithead baths and the winding house at the colliery, which worked from 1880 to 1980 and employed around 1,400 men at its peak

See the sawmill and other Grade II listed buildings, part of the Blaenavon Industrial Landscape World Heritage Site listed in 2000

Big Pit was a working coal mine from 1880 until it closed on 2 February 1980, and it opened to the public in 1983; it is now the National Coal Museum. Former miners take you 90m below ground, with a lamp and battery weighing 5kg on your belt, for an hour-long tour of the underground roads. On the surface are the pithead baths put in in 1939, which meant miners no longer walked home wet and black, and the winding house and other listed colliery buildings, all part of the Blaenavon World Heritage Site.

Big Pit: Ninety Metres Down With the Miners

Tour Blaenafon Ironworks, built in 1788–1789, with its Grade I listed blast furnaces, cast house and water-powered balance tower

Look at the site where Sidney Gilchrist Thomas and Percy Gilchrist experimented in 1877–1878 with the process that let phosphoric iron ores be used

Walk Stack Square, the workers' cottages restored to different periods

Visit the Blaenavon World Heritage Centre

Blaenafon Ironworks, as Cadw now spells it, was built in 1788–89, and its blast furnaces, cast house and water-balance tower still stand; it was here in 1877–78 that Sidney Gilchrist Thomas and Percy Gilchrist worked out the process that let phosphoric iron ores be used. The ironworkers lived in Stack Square beside the works, now restored to different periods. The town and its landscape became a World Heritage Site in 2000, and the Pontypool and Blaenavon Railway runs on the hill above.

Blaenafon Ironworks: The Furnaces and Stack Square

Cycle the Elan Valley Trail from Rhayader, or drive the valley road, past Caban-coch, Garreg-ddu, Pen-y-garreg and Craig-goch

Walk out on the Claerwen dam, opened by Elizabeth II in 1952

Find out how the water reaches Birmingham: 73 miles by gravity, dropping 52 metres, in a day and a half to two days

Stay out after dark beside one of the reservoirs and find the Milky Way

The Elan Valley is where Birmingham's water comes from. The Birmingham Corporation Water Act of 1892 let the city buy the whole catchment; thousands of navvies and their families lived in a village of wooden huts, where Elan Village stands now, while the first four dams went up at the turn of the century, and the fifth, Claerwen, was opened by Elizabeth II in 1952, one of her first official engagements as queen. The water still runs to Frankley Reservoir in Birmingham by gravity alone — the Elan aqueduct drops 52 metres over 73 miles, at a gradient of 1 in 2,300, and the water takes a day and a half to two days to arrive. The valley covers 70 square miles of lake and hill west of Rhayader, and since 2015 it has been an International Dark Sky Park.

The Elan Valley: Birmingham's Reservoirs Under a Dark Sky

Take the underground tour led by former miners at the Rhondda Heritage Park in Trehafod, on the site of the Lewis Merthyr Colliery, which employed some 5,000 men and produced almost a million tons of coal a year by 1890

See the six-foot replica miner's lamp monument unveiled in May 2000 to those lost or harmed by the mining industry

Drive up the Rhondda, the valley that once had more than 53 working collieries in 16 miles

The Rhondda once had more than 53 working collieries in 16 miles of valley. At Trehafod, the Rhondda Heritage Park stands on the Lewis Merthyr Colliery, which employed some 5,000 men and produced almost a million tons of coal a year by 1890, and former miners lead the underground tour. A six-foot replica miner's lamp, unveiled in May 2000, remembers those lost or harmed by the industry.