Llanfrynach

A Self-contained Village

The red telephone box in Llanfrynach no longer takes calls. It lends books instead, and before the books it served, by the village's own description, as the country's smallest art gallery. It stands in a settlement that the main road and the canal both manage to miss, which is much of the reason it feels the way it does.

The Nant Menasgin runs through the village on its way down from Cwm Oergwm to the River Usk, with woodland following the water. To the west the ground climbs to Fan y Big and Cefn Cyff; to the east lie Bryn and Gist Wen. The Old Red Sandstone tops of Bannau Brycheiniog stand along the southern horizon. The community council describes the effect as "a very self-contained, unspoilt feel."

There is no pub, restaurant, café or shop in the village itself. The White Swan, a 17th-century building opposite the church, served the community until it closed in 2017; it remains closed, its future uncertain. The good food is elsewhere, at Groesffordd and Pencelli.

Food Along the Bus Corridor

The Three Horseshoes at Groesffordd has been run by Ashley Haworth for more than twenty years, with Alex Parrett as head chef. The kitchen sends out Black Mountain Smokery salmon pâté with pickled fennel, slow-braised shoulder of lamb with creamed potato and wild garlic, battered Cornish fish with chips and crushed peas, and Perl Las with bara brith and truffle honey. Well-behaved dogs are welcome in the bar, the beer garden and the bookable garden huts.

The Royal Oak at Pencelli sits beside the canal, with home-cooked food, real ales and a canal-side garden. Both Pencelli and Llanfrynach are stops on the 43 and X43 buses, which run from outside St Brynach's Church to Brecon, Talybont-on-Usk, Crickhowell and Abergavenny; the last of these is the nearest railhead, since the village has no station of its own. At Talybont-on-Usk the village stores hold the bread, milk and post office, and sell local beers and ciders, walking maps, and homemade frozen curries — chicken jalfrezi, tadka dal, a chickpea-and-spinach Madras — for the nights you would rather not cook.

Towpath and High Ridge

Two walks begin near the village. One follows the canal towpath from Storehouse Bridge, past sheep fields, moorings, old limekilns and Watton Wharf, to the Brecon Basin. It crosses the Brynich Aqueduct, Thomas Dadford's four-arched masonry crossing of the Usk, built in 1800 and the largest structure on the whole canal. Joseph Murray Ince painted it in 1840, a towed boat sitting high above the river against the mountains. Herons, kingfishers, otters and red kites are all possible along the way.

The mountain route starts beside the village hall and climbs through farmland and a wooded holloway onto the ridge and Fan y Big: 10.2 miles and 707 metres of ascent, with Pen y Fan, Cribyn, the Black Mountains and Llangorse Lake laid out from the top. It is a challenging route, exposed in poor weather.

Church Stones and Community Spirit

St Brynach's keeps its late-medieval west tower, which survived the Victorian rebuilding of the rest by local builder William Jones. Inside are a medieval font and one early-medieval carved stone turned up during the works. The churchyard is unusually large and flat, with an avenue of yews and a cross erected in 1910 for the de Winton family, copying one at Merthyr Mawr, the Crucified Christ on one face and the Virgin and Child on the other. The church was recorded as "Ecclesia de Lambernach" in the Taxatio of 1291 and valued at £4 6s 8d.

The Ty Bach public toilets are kept going by volunteers, and donations towards them once paid for new toilets in Burundi through a twinning scheme.