Sit in a hide for the afternoon kite feed

Count how many kites come in and look for a pale leucistic bird

Walk the farm trail up the hill behind the feeding ground

Walk into Rhayader, the market town on the upper Wye

By the 20th century the red kite was down to a handful of breeding pairs in mid Wales — every red kite in Britain today descends from that remnant or from later reintroductions. Gigrin Farm at Rhayader is where the local farmer began putting out meat for them, and it is now one of the best places in the country to see them: hundreds come in at feeding time each afternoon. About one in a hundred Welsh chicks hatches as a rare white leucistic bird, so it is worth watching for a pale one in the crowd.

Gigrin Farm: Hundreds of Red Kites at Feeding Time

The Elan Valley

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

The Elan Valley and Rhayader

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

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

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

Ride the Vale of Rheidol Railway up from Aberystwyth

Look down at the three stacked bridges over the Mynach

Walk the Jacob's Ladder steps down into the gorge

Take the short Punchbowl and Three Bridges walk down to the Devil's Punchbowl

At Devil's Bridge the Mynach drops through a gorge to meet the Rheidol, and three bridges stand stacked one above another, built hundreds of years apart. The Vale of Rheidol Railway, narrow gauge and steam-hauled, climbs twelve miles up from Aberystwyth to the station above the falls.

Devil's Bridge: Three Bridges on Top of Each Other

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

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

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

Walk the pinewoods and find the red squirrels

Look for prehistoric footprints exposed in the beach silts

Walk the dunes and listen for natterjack toads in spring

Follow the paths through the dunes to the beach for the view over the Irish Sea

The National Trust looks after the pinewoods and dunes at Formby Point, a Site of Special Scientific Interest and one of several places in Britain where red squirrels still survive, alongside natterjack toads in the dune slacks. The beach itself keeps something older: layers of silt that hold the footprints of people and of red deer, roe deer, wild boar, wolf and aurochs. In June 2016 more than fifty human footprints around 7,000 years old were uncovered here.

Formby: Red Squirrels, Pinewoods and 7,000-Year-Old Footprints

Strike the Eric Morecambe pose beside his statue on the prom

Walk the Stone Jetty and find the Time and Tide Bell beside it, which rings around high tide

See the Winter Gardens, the old Victoria Pavilion

Morecambe grew out of the fishing village of Poulton-le-Sands after the Morecambe Harbour and Railway Company was formed in 1846 to build a harbour and railway there, and the seafront still has the shape of a Victorian resort with the whole Lakeland skyline across the water. Graham Ibbeson's bronze of Eric Morecambe, born here in 1926, was unveiled by the Queen in July 1999 and stands looking out over the bay. Beside the Stone Jetty, a Time and Tide Bell by Marcus Vergette was installed in 2019 and is rung by the sea itself.