All walks › Rhayader & the Elan Valley
Rhayader & the Elan ValleyElan Valley Dams
The Victorian dams above Rhayader, on good paths with water beside you most of the way. It is the sheer scale of the masonry that stays with people.
- Distance
- 4.0 mi / 6.4 km
- Time
- 1 hr 45
- Ascent
- 120 m
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Shape
- There and back
Where it is
The circle shows the general area, not the exact start. Use the directions link below to get to the car park itself. Contours and paths shown are OpenTopoMap, drawn from OpenStreetMap data.
The route
From the visitor centre, take the path upstream past Caban Coch dam and continue along the reservoir towards Garreg Ddu and the submerged causeway. Turn back whenever you have had enough; the route is out and back and the return is downhill.
Worth knowing
- When the reservoirs are full and spilling, the dams run as sheets of white water and are genuinely spectacular. After a dry summer they are just walls.
- Red kites are close to guaranteed overhead. The visitor centre will tell you where they have been feeding.
- The road through the valley is narrow and busy in summer. Cyclists come round the bends fast.
What you’ll see
Caban Coch and Garreg Ddu dams, open water, oak woods on the valley sides and kites almost continuously.
Background
Built between 1893 and 1904 to supply Birmingham, seventy miles away, entirely by gravity. Around a hundred people were moved out of the valley and a church, a school and several farms were drowned. The city paid no compensation to the tenants.