Kate Humble: What I learnt about Wales on this untamed trail

Times

26-04-2025

I step out into the golden light of the morning, walking past the clocktower and up Knighton's steep, silent high street to a network of narrow paths that lead me out of town. I follow a track through oak woods, scattering rabbits and squirrels, then out into more open country where my path rises and falls with the gentle contours of the green hills.
There are sheep, horses and cattle, all plump from sweet summer grass. The rowan trees are vibrant with orange-red berries, verges bright with harebells and rosebay willowherb, and blackberries are ripening in the hedgerows. I walk through the village of Llangunllo where a solitary dog walker and I exchange greetings before I once again leave the tarmac and follow the route up onto Beacon Hill Common. It is bleaker up here. Tussocky heather, dark, boggy soil and ponds of inky water. The sky is huge, a panorama of greys, yellows and blues. I feel both insignificant and uplifted by this splendid, wild isolation.
This is Glyndwr's Way, a long-distance walking trail in mid-Wales named after Owain Glyndwr, who, in 1399, led a campaign against the English Crown for an independent Wales. His guerrilla tactics were so successful that by 1404 he controlled most of the country. But his heartland was here in central Wales, and this route celebrates a part of the country that fought hard for its sovereignty. Even today it retains the frisson of a place untamed.
The route heads southwest from the Powys border town of Knighton, where Glyndwr's men overthrew the English garrison, as far west as Machynlleth inland from the coast where he held his first parliament. From there it turns northeast to skirt Lake Vyrnwy and finishes in Welshpool, a distance of 135 miles covered comfortably in nine days of walking. But at Welshpool I joined the Offa's Dyke Path, which turns the walk into a satisfying loop, returning walkers to Knighton, victorious, after 160 miles.
This is the third long-distance trail I've walked in my home country of Wales, but this is the first time I am walking between B&Bs, my luggage transferred for me each day, rather than camping. I have always enjoyed the sensation of being completely self-sufficient, of carrying everything I need on my back, but in the coming days I discover that the luxuries of warm showers, comfortable beds, home-cooked meals and cold beer are all eclipsed by the greatest luxury of all — walking unburdened by anything more weighty than a small day pack.
Coming down from Beacon Hill Common, I reach the small village of Felindre. My map tells me there's a pub, but it has the desolate look of a building that has not been open for some time and I press on, munching nuts and trying not to think about cider. At the top of a hill, beneath whirring wind turbines, I phone Ray, my host for the evening. We meet on the valley road and he drives me to the village of Llanbister, where he and his wife run the Lion Hotel, my home for the night.
I've covered 22 miles today. I've seen a couple of farmers out with their sheep, the dog walker and a man stacking wood outside his garage, and no one else. Yet this is August bank holiday Monday — a day forecast to be dry, with a gentle breeze and temperatures in the high teens. Perfect walking weather. And this is a national trail — a status it shares with the Pennine Way, the South Downs Way and others — for the beauty of the landscapes it passes through.
• Read our full guide to Wales
And it really is beautiful. I'm now in the heart of the Radnor hills, which roll and fold like a big, lazy ocean swell. Steady climbs bring me onto ridges golden with flowering gorse before I descend through woods and over chattering streams to the remnants of a 12th-century Cistercian monastery. Red kites whistle and soar overhead. Further on, as I walk through the small settlement of Bwlch-y-Sarnau, I spot the Glyndwr Café, which proves to be a kettle, instant coffee and teabags in the porch of the community centre where, for a donation, walkers can make themselves a hot drink. I reach the small town of Llanidloes with its distinctive 17th-century timber-framed market hall, bakeries and bookshop, and cross the River Severn to follow forest tracks beneath towering beech trees. A soft rain falls, stopping as I emerge onto the open hill, and I join the rising mist as it curls its wispy way from the unseen depths of the valley — the breath of a sleeping dragon. The solid heft of a dam wall comes into view and my path follows the bank of the huge reservoir held behind it, sailing boats bobbing on its glassy surface.
The landscape is changing. There is slate beneath my feet and the hills are choppier, the climbs and descents steeper, the views more dramatic. I pause at a hide on the edge of the Hafren Forest. Visible through binoculars is a large, unruly bundle of sticks wedged into the top of a pine tree. Two ospreys sit sentinel beside it, guarding the pale-headed chick cocooned in its twiggy nest. This is what I love about travelling through a landscape at walking pace. It is immersive and intimate and visceral. After a long climb I reach a plateau and a lake — a pool of light against its backdrop of dark rock. The sun is bright now, casting deep shadows in the gullies and sharpening the ridges, making all around me seem bigger and more expansive. And I, in turn, feel like a shrinking Alice in my Welsh Wonderland.
After a riotous open-mic night at the White Lion Hotel in Machynlleth, I follow corduroy-like ridges and furrows east and north. I stop for coffee and a sandwich at Caffi JoJo, the social hub of Llanbrynmair (caffijojo.co.uk). A man writing his journal at another table tells me I'm the first person he's seen walking the Glyndŵr Way since he set off a week before. 'I'm from the East Midlands, which is very flat. It's why I love Wales. I've done the Severn Way and Offa's Dyke, which I really enjoyed, but this route feels really off the beaten track. I can't believe how varied it is, and beautiful, and yet there is no one on it.'
The Right to Roam movement criticises the fact that public access to the countryside is restricted and causes honeypots like Scafell Pike and Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon). Yet according to the Ordnance Survey, there are about 140,000 miles of public rights of way in England and Wales — enough to keep even the most energetic of walkers walking for decades. The issue is not the lack of a right to roam, but that we are drawn to places of repute, which in turn sustains the cafés, shops and hotels that add to their appeal. Less well-known areas, like the ones I'm walking through, don't have the necessary footfall to fund the facilities that attract visitors, so they remain — often undeservedly — less visited. Rachel Thomas, the fantastically energetic proprietor of the Cann Office Hotel in the tiny hamlet of Llangadfan, says the problem is confounded by the near impossibility of finding and keeping hospitality staff in rural areas. Her business, like everywhere I stay on route, is entirely run by her and her family.
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An upland path beyond Llanwddyn leads to forest tracks a-flutter with peacock butterflies and a network of quiet lanes which bring me to the village of Meifod. From here it is just ten miles over a series of hills to Welshpool, the official end of Glyndwr's Way. But I head on, out of town along the canal, looking at a great wall of land rising ahead of me — the fortification against the Welsh that King Offa had constructed in the 780s. I pause to catch my breath before reaching the spectacular viewpoint at Beacon Ring, an Iron Age hillfort.
From here it is a long descent, passing the village of Montgomery — its ruined castle visible on the horizon, to recharge in the town of Cwm before a final 14 miles of ups and downs bring me, elated, back to Knighton's clocktower. Ultimately Glyndwr couldn't hold onto his dream of an independent Wales, but the trail that bears his name is a rugged, glorious testament to the country he fought so hard for.Kate Humble was a guest of Celtic Trails, which has five nights' B&B from £615pp (celtictrailswalkingholidays.co.uk)
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