Brecon Beacons National Park Outdoors

This is a beautiful part of Wales, with traditional market towns, stunning landscape, canal paths, castles and plenty of family attractions. The scenery here is both beautiful and diverse - rolling countryside and valleys, wide open spaces to the wild beauty of the waterfalls and caves.

The Brecon Beacons are said to be named after the ancient practice of lighting signal fires (beacons) on mountains to warn of attacks by the English, or more recently to commemorate public and national events such as coronations or the Millennium.

Activities in the Park include walking, cycling, mountain biking, horse riding, as well as sailing, windsurfing, canoeing and fishing, rock climbing, hang-gliding, caravanning, camping and caving. A long-distance cycling route, the Taff Trail, passes over the Beacons on its way from Brecon to Cardiff, and in 2005 the first walk to span the entire length of the Brecon Beacons National Park was opened. The 100-mile (160 km) route, called the Beacons Way, runs from the foot of Ysgyryd Fawr east of Abergavenny and ends in the village of Bethlehem in Carmarthenshire.