Crai

The valley and what has gone

A 28-metre embankment holds back Crai Reservoir at the head of the valley, built between 1898 and 1906 to supply the Tawe valley and north Swansea. The Afon Crai rises above it as Blaen-crai, west of Fan Gyhirych, and once past the dam it works down through Felin-crai and Cwm Crai to meet the Usk near Sennybridge. This is the shape of the place: a scatter of livestock farms along a high valley about twenty kilometres west of Brecon, some of them now taking in visitors, with the church standing apart from what counts as the centre.

You should know before you arrive that Crai does not sell you anything. The shop has closed. So has the post office. So has the railway station, which served the Neath and Brecon line from 1870 until 1962 before the building was pulled down and a single-storey house put up in its place. For food and drink you drive north to Sennybridge, where the Londis has a forecourt and everyday groceries, and the Usk and Railway Inn keeps six letting rooms and a beer garden. Recent menus have run to chargrilled steak, beer-battered Gower Gold cod, a homemade curry of the day and a miso butterbean cassoulet, and the meat comes from Paddy Sweeney, a butcher in Brecon. Dogs are welcome.

Inns, water and higher ground

A little further west along the A40, the Castle Coaching Inn at Trecastle was named AA Inn of the Year for Wales in 2026. There is a log fire, ten bedrooms, and recent menus have included beef curry, bavette steak with chimichurri, slow-cooked pork ribs and a Welsh cheeseboard of Perl Las, Perl Wen and Hafod cheddar. Dogs sit in the bar rather than the restaurant.

What Crai has instead of shops is water and ground to walk on. The reservoir is a fly-only fishery for wild brown trout on the Cnewr Estate, with three kilometres of shoreline available for fishing and a season from April to the end of September; permits come from Cnewr Farm, and there are no boats. A walking guide describes an easy out-and-back of about two kilometres from the A4067 side towards the dam, past woodland and waterfalls beside the Afon Crai. For something taller, Henrhyd Falls near Coelbren drops ninety feet into a wooded gorge, reached by a steep and often slippery mile of steps; dogs are allowed on short leads. Walkers who prefer rock to water can take the Cribarth Geotrail from Craig-y-nos, three and a quarter miles across folded limestone and old quarry workings, best not attempted in low cloud.

The tower above the reservoir

Above the reservoir stands a solid stone tower about twelve feet high. One account calls it a survey marker for the aqueduct tunnel driven through the watershed; local memory has it as a vent. Nobody has settled the question.

St Ilid and Capel Bach

The church, St Ilid, went up quickly. The foundation stone was laid in April 1882 and the bishop consecrated the building the following March. Local subscriptions covered £600 of the thousand pounds it cost, and Mrs Williams of Maescarnog gave the land. It replaced Capel Bach, a plain chapel of ease that had stood by the Roman road on the ground now called Tircapel. Inside, a single stained-glass light of St Winefride was made by Powell and Sons around 1924.

The reservoir workers’ memorial

In the churchyard the men who built the reservoir raised a stone to those who did not survive the work, dating it 1898 to 1906. It is the plainest thing in the village and the one that stays with you.