Radar weekends away to Elan Valley happened over many years with some great memories staying at the Elan Valley Hotel near Rhayader. Tiggy visited a few times in 2018, 2019 and 2021.
The Elan Valley in Mid-Wales is a stunning landscape of Victorian dams, reservoirs, and rugged Cambrian Mountain scenery, managed for clean water supply to Birmingham and popular for outdoor activities like walking, biking, and stargazing. Known as the “Welsh Lake District,” it offers a Visitor Centre, bike hire, trails, and is an International Dark Sky Park, protecting its pristine night skies.
Here are a few pics of the hotel.
One of the room I stayed in, I think over the years I stayed in three different rooms.
Elan Valley has some beautiful scenery, reservoirs and a visitors centre. Here is a good view from the top of the Caban Coch Dam along the valley with the visitors centre in the distance.
Some more pics of the Caban Coch Dam.
The view across the reservoir created by the dam.
Heading along the Afon Elan river bank you pass the Elan Village Suspension Bridge.
Below are four walks completed during my stays at the Elan Valley Hotel.
This is one of the first walks we did anti-clockwise around one of the hills surrounding Elan Valley. A walk where I saw a snake (probably a slow worm) on a footpath, the snake was small but increased in size everytime the story was told.
One of the more standard walks we did, along the river bank to the Dam, Visitors Centre and back to the hotel.
A nice, long Sunday hike to Rhayader and back we did one year.
This walk has a rope bridge (Glyn Bridge).
On some of the walks we had difficult choices to make…
Here are some of the views during one of the walks.
Obligatory “locals” pic.
Also very near Elan Valley dam is a smaller, but more historically important, dam. The Nant-y-Gro Dam which was used for testing explosives on dams for the second world war Dambusters raids.
Fun as the weekends away at Elan Valley Hotel were, the roadtrips to and from were just as great. Here are a few pics taken during those long, scenic journeys.
