Start/Finish: Llandrindod Wells Tourist Information Centre Distance: 4.5 mile circular walk Notes : The walk is not suitable for pushchairs. Strong shoes or boots are advisable because of several steep slopes and muddy areas.

At thc picnic site, there is an ancient right of way to the old church of St Michael across the river Ithon. At one time it was by way of a ford for carts and foot passengers. Then in Victorian times a bridge for pedestrians was constructed of wire spans joined by rough planking - this of course, was very 'shaky'. However the shaky bridge and the ford have now both been replaced by a solid bridge.

1. Starting from the Tourist Information Centre, go past the Museum and the toilets, across the wooden bridge to the road. Turn right past the decorative back entrance of the Metropole Hotel which was supposed to be the front but the pre-1914-18 War developers guessed wrong about the route of the main road.

When you reach the T junction, cross over and turn left to the drive to the County Hall. Almost at once turn right at a finger post onto a path which you follow through the trees to a kissing gate to your right. Go through the gate but keep in the same direction with the hedge/fence to your left. When you come to the next T junction turn right, through a modern kissing gate, to the road by the Lake.

2. Turn left, and continue round the lake for 200 yards/meters. Turn left through a kissing gate on to a broad tarmac track. When the track bears left keep on through the trees on a narrow pathway to a grassy slope still going up hill. At the top pass the finger post and keep to the path with the hedge to your left. Just before the next finger post and before you cross the stile, turn right up the brackeny slope.

At the cross path turn left and shortly after turn right on the path leading uphill through the trees and out into the open. Cross the stile by the gorse bushes and then keeping straight ahead make for a stile to the right of a line of trees. From here you can see the next stile on the opposite fence.

3. There is a faint grassy track up hill to the Trig Point (marked by a white pillar about a metre tall) from which the Ordnance Survey mapped the surrounding country. This hill is called Beacon Hill and has been used for that purpose for centuries - the last beacon was to celebrate the start of the European Union.

Follow the track down to the road making to the left of a stand of conifers you can see below and turn left. (To shorten the walk by over half a mile you can keep on the road until you reach a gate to your left with Llanolau on the name plate, and you will have rejoined the main route.) To keep to the main route, turn right after a few yds/mts into a clear-felled plantation. The plantation has been replanted with both conifers and broad leaf trees and the brush has been left as protection and fertilizer for the young trees.

4. When you reach the end of the track through the plantation, turn right over a stile. You are going round the outside of a garden and after a short distance over another stile. Still keeping round the garden continue till you come to a stile to your left. This takes you on to a hillside. Dodging the gorse bushes and bracken try to keep close to the fence on your right as you go up hill until you reach a track.

By kind permission of the landowner as it isn't a public footpath, turn left on the track and continue to the hawthorn tree. Then turn left downhill to reach a stile in the fence. This leads to a drive way which you cross and leave by another stile almost opposite. You have to turn right immediately and over another stile which is fitted with chicken wire to keep the goats out.

After less than 20 yards/metres turn left along a straight path which takes you over a small bridge made of railway sleepers and up to the road. Go left up hill and soon after the bungalow on your right turn right on a track which leads past the old farmhouse called Llanolau. (Llanolau means church settlement of lights or perhaps should be Llwynolau which means grove of lights.)

5. Continue on this track which starts to descend, ignore a path, going off to the left - it only leads to a spring which was the water supply for the farm. You will reach a narrow country road. Beware the traffic! (To shorten the walk by another half mile you can turn left on this road and rejoin the others at a stile from the field to your right.)

If you turn right down the hill, you will come to the Shaky Bridge picnic site near the river Ithon and you can visit the ancient church of St Michael by going across the bridge and over the common. To continue on the main route, climb over a stile to the left of the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust's Information Board into a field. Go up the field, keeping to the left of ground sloping down to the river and make for the stile to the road where your friends are waiting.

6. Turn right, still going up hill until the road bends sharply to your left. The road becomes wider and passes Bailey Einon Farm. Einon was one of the medieval Welsh rulers and this must have been the site of one of his fortified houses or baileys. His name occurs in several place names in Radnorshire.

7. You will be going down hill now for a while and just after the 30 mph sign and by a huge glacial erratic boulder turn right on a tarmac lane. After 50 yards turn left and over a stile on to an enclosed path which leads to a bridge.

Across the bridge you reach a field where you go up the slope with the hedge on your right to another lane leading to Llanfawr (the large church settlement or grove) Farm. Turn left here and pass bungalows on each side. Go down the slope and just past a corrugated iron barn which used to be a blacksmith's, there is a kissing gate to your left. This leads to a play area.

8. Go round the play area in front of Wylesfield Old People's Home until you reach a road. Turn right and follow the road which bears to the left, first through modern houses and then reaches the edge of the Victorian town with its redbrick multi storey guest houses.

At the crossroads go straight over into Beaufort road (Lord Beaufort was the owner of much of the land that Llandrindod was built on) and about 50 yards along you reach the path on your right leading over the bridge back to the TIC.

This walk was given to us by kind permission of Llandrindod Wells Town Council, with all the photographs taken by David Morgans.

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