Wales
Elan Valley
Victorian dams stacked up a valley to water Birmingham, drowned houses and a dark sky above.
Birmingham's water comes from here. Between 1893 and 1904, 50,000 men built a staircase of dams up a remote valley in mid Wales and sent the rivers Elan and Claerwen down 118 kilometres of pipeline to the English Midlands, drowning two country houses, eighteen farms, a school and the church on the way.
Edward VII opened the dams on 21 July 1904, and they are still the reason to come: Caban Coch, Garreg Ddu, Pen y Garreg and Craig Goch stacked up the Elan, the Claerwen dam above them, and the unfinished Dol y Mynach left where the money stopped. The reservoirs cover the two lost houses of Cwm Elan and Nantgwyllt, both connected to Shelley, who stayed at one and tried in 1812 to take the other for his young wife. Roads run the length of the chain, the visitor centre hires bicycles, the visitor centre below Caban Coch tells the story with a café whose windows look straight at the dam, and the surrounding estate is mostly a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Since 2015 the estate has held International Dark Sky Park status, the first privately owned park open to the public to earn the status, with silver-tier skies. On the Rhayader side, Gigrin Farm runs a red kite feeding station where hundreds of the birds come down to feed, a spectacle particular to this corner of Wales; autumn brings the colour; a still night brings the stars.
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Solo
Cycle the length of the dams, sit under Craig Goch at dusk and stay for the dark sky.
Couple
A night on the estate, the dams in evening light, the kites at Gigrin and stargazing from the dam road after dark.
Family
Dams that look like castles, a visitor centre that explains the drowned village, and hundreds of red kites at feeding time.
Friends
A cycling weekend up the valley chain with the café as base camp and Rhayader's pubs at the end.
- Work began in 1893, and on 21 July 1904 Edward VII and Queen Alexandra opened the dams and water started along 118 kilometres of pipeline to Birmingham; the scheme cost six million pounds and employed 50,000 men.
- Beneath the water lie the two country houses of Cwm Elan and Nantgwyllt, both linked to the poet Shelley, along with 44 other properties including eighteen farms, a school and the church.
- Four dams follow the Elan, Craig Goch, Pen y Garreg, Garreg Ddu and Caban Coch, and two more sit on the Claerwen, one of them never finished.
- In 2015 the estate won International Dark Sky Park status, the first privately owned but publicly accessible park in the world to do so.
Breakfast or a main meal in the dam-side café at the visitor centre, its windows all round giving onto the River Elan and the dam wall.
Supper in a Rhayader pub: in the market towns of mid Wales the pub is the first place locals send you, and Rhayader is the town at the valley's mouth.
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