Waterfall Country

There is a waterfall in south Wales you can walk behind. At Sgwd yr Eira, the fall of snow, a rough ledge once used by sheep farmers to cross the river passes under the curtain of water, and the four rivers that made it, the Mellte, Hepste, Pyrddin and Nedd-fechan, have cut a country of gorges so damp and green that the national park calls it a Welsh rainforest.

Waterfall Country sits on the south-west edge of Bannau Brycheiniog, and the classic day is the Four Falls Trail from the Gwaun Hepste car park: wide main paths through the woods, then steep, rocky, slippery spurs down to Sgwd Clun-Gwyn, Sgwd Isaf Clun-Gwyn, Sgwd y Pannwr and, half an hour further, Sgwd yr Eira itself. Every surface is moss and fern, a habitat rarer than tropical rainforest and protected as a Special Area of Conservation, which is why the request to stay on the waymarked paths is not fussiness: the plants are slow and the crowds, around 160,000 visitors a year, have worn the banks. The other request is about the water: people have died here, the pools are cold, deep and fast, and the advice from the agencies that manage the site is never to enter the river. Dinas Rock, a limestone cliff low in the valley, has a short accessible trail to cascades for those who cannot manage the steps, and Penderyn distillery is a few miles away for the evening. Lanes are single-track and car parks fill before midday, so come early or come in the shoulder months, when the falls are fullest anyway.