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

Hay-on-Wye

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

Walk Rock Park and find the old pump room and chalybeate spring

Walk round the ornamental lake made in the 1870s

Look at the Victorian ironwork and verandas along the streets

Visit the Radnorshire Museum for the story of the spa

Llandrindod grew into a spa town in the 19th century around springs whose healing qualities had drawn visitors since the mid-18th. In the season, between May and mid-September, people took the waters at the pump rooms in Rock Park and at the Pump House Hotel with orchestras playing, and an ornamental lake was made out of marshland in the early 1870s.

Llandrindod Wells: Taking the Waters in Mid Wales

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

Study the Mappa Mundi and find Hereford on it

See the chained library with the books still on their chains

Walk the Norman nave arcade and the crossing arches

Hereford Cathedral holds the Mappa Mundi, a map of the world drawn around 1300 with Jerusalem at its centre and the edges full of monsters, and the largest chained library in the world, its books still on the rods they were locked to. The building itself is part Norman and part Gothic, rebuilt from ruin by Bishop Robert of Lorraine from 1079.

Hereford: The Mappa Mundi and the Chained Library

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 preserved stretch of Offa's Dyke at Knighton

Cross the Teme from Wales into England on foot at Knighton

Walk a few miles of the 177-mile Offa's Dyke Path

Offa's Dyke runs roughly along the England–Wales border, an earthwork up to 20m wide with its ditch and 2.4m high, named for Offa of Mercia, who ruled from 757 to 796, though parts of it may be older still. Knighton — Tref-y-clawdd, the town on the dyke — sits astride it, with the Offa's Dyke Centre in the town and a preserved section of the earthwork close by.

Knighton and Offa's Dyke: The Town on the Dyke

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

Walk into the passage of the north-east cairn

See how the passages line up with the midwinter sunset

Walk the ring of standing stones around each cairn

Find the kerb stones carved with cup marks

The Balnuaran of Clava lie in a grove of trees by the River Nairn: three Bronze Age cairns in a line running north-east to south-west, the two at the ends passage graves with their entrances oriented south-west towards the midwinter sunset, each ringed by standing stones. The site gave its name to the whole class of Clava cairns, and the Culloden battlefield is a couple of miles away.