Introduction

This National Trail is 135 miles long, crossing the Welsh county of Powys twice – from Knighton in the east to Machynlleth in the west then back east again to Welshpool, finishing just 30 miles north of where it started. The countryside it passes through had strong associations in the 14th and 15th centuries with the Welsh hero and self proclaimed prince, Owain Glyndŵr.

The OS guidebook by David Perrott splits it into 16 sections but this area of Wales is quite sparsely populated so the actual choice of breaks is almost entirely dependent on where you can find suitable accommodation. The average time taken to do the walk is usually quoted at 9 days but we chose to camp and walked it over 10 days. 9 would have been feasible except for the lack of campsites around Llanwddyn and the Lake Vyrnwy area which meant that the section ending there would have been over 20 miles. This is just a bit too much for my taste when carrying full camping gear so we split it and had two pleasantly easy days instead.

I say we – my daughter Mel walked it with me and although her joining in was a bit of a late decision, being twenty-something with a very active lifestyle and a naturally strong walker she coped very well without the need for a lot of training. It has to be said though that it is a fairly tough walk with most days having well over 2000 feet of ascent and descent so I would only recommend it to people who enjoy hills! It’s also in a very remote part of Wales so it was definitely a bonus having Mel’s company this time.

This is an account of our walk. I’ve mainly tried to give an idea of what it’s like to walk the trail without going over the top on the detail, but above all I hope you’ll find there’s some helpful information if you’re planning to do the trail yourself.

Day 1  Knighton to Felindre
Day 2  Felindre to Abbey-cwm-hir
Day 3  Abbey-cwm-hir to Llanidloes
Day 4  Llanidloes to Esgair Fochnant
Day 5  Esgair Fochnant to Machynlleth
Day 6  Machynlleth to Llanbrynmair
Day 7  Llanbrynmair to Llangadfan
Day 8  Llangadfan to Llanwddyn
Day 9  Llanwddyn to Meifod
Day 10 Meifod to Welshpool
Conclusions and tips