The Farmers Arms stands on the A479 with hops strung along the bar, a cast-iron range in the grate and a large open fireplace. It is community-owned, and a good deal rests on it. The kitchen leans on home-cooked food and a carvery. You will find beer-battered fish of the day, slow-cooked belly pork with mustard mash and apple gravy, a vegetable curry, the Farmers Arms burger and a vegan "Bad Boy" burger; on Sundays there is roast beef, lamb and pork, a homemade nut roast, seasonal fruit pie and a caramel Belgian waffle. Two cask ales change on the bar, usually one national and one local. Dogs are welcome and there is a beer garden.
Cwmdu means "dark valley". The village runs along the road as it drops through the Rhiangoll valley, about six kilometres north-west of Crickhowell, with the older houses climbing to a spur where the church sits above the newer settlement below.
St Michael's was largely rebuilt in 1831-33 but kept its fifteenth-century tower, which Cadw calls especially fine. The font is an early-twentieth-century bowl set on a thirteenth-century clustered-shaft pedestal. The reredos and communion rails are older pieces of the church's rood screen, reused by a former vicar.
That vicar was Thomas Price, and one thing he did in the village is easy to walk up to. Built into a south buttress is an early medieval inscribed stone reading CATACUS HIC IACIT FILIUS TEGERNACUS — "Here lies Cattoc son of Teyrnoc." Price carried it here from a field a mile off and set it into the wall. He arrived as vicar in 1825, wrote under the bardic name Carnhuanawc, produced a major history of Wales, campaigned for the Welsh language and helped support a school for blind harpists. He died in 1848 and is buried here.
For walking, the village hall is the usual starting point for an 8.5-mile circular over Cefn Moel. It joins the Beacons Way, climbs past the summit cairns, drops down to Bwlch and returns through fields by way of Felindre. From the ridge you can pick out Llangorse Lake, Pen y Fan, the Black Mountains and Crickhowell laid out below.
The antiquary Theophilus Jones called this arable vale the "granary of Brecknockshire". Above it sits Pen-y-Gaer, a Roman auxiliary fort roughly midway between the garrisons at Brecon and Abergavenny. In the drought summer of 2018 aerial photographs showed its buried internal plan. Nearby, a small Old Red Sandstone figure, thought to be a late Iron Age or Romano-British deity, is built into Middle Gaer House and can be seen from the road.
The A479 carries you south to Crickhowell and north to Talgarth. Abergavenny, about eleven miles off, is the nearest railway station. The X12 bus calls at the Farmers Arms on Tuesdays only, one morning run towards Crickhowell and Abergavenny and an afternoon return. For anything more than the pub you will want the car: Tretower Court and Castle is nearby on the A479, and Crickhowell has Cashells, a three-generation butcher and deli stocking more than seventy-five cheeses, and Book-ish, a bookshop with a café.
Once a year the fields fill up. The Cwmdu and District Show has run since 1988, with sheep classes, pony qualifiers, vintage machinery, country crafts, cookery and a dog show, and children's competitions.