The picnic benches at Llangattock Wharf are built to mimic the tram-cars that once ran across the tops of the limekilns below them. One of the kilns is Grade II*-listed, the canal beside them is 225 years old, and from here the Monmouthshire & Brecon towpath runs in either direction. It is a straightforward towpath option.
Llangattock sits in the Usk valley just south of Crickhowell, under the limestone cliffs and old quarry workings of the escarpment that carries its name. The core is red sandstone: narrow unpavemented lanes, setted passages, stone walls and mature beech hedges, with the Nant Onneu brook threading through. Views open north across the rooftops to Crickhowell, and south to the crags.
The Horse Shoe Inn reopened in 2017 after a long closure. It is an early-19th-century coaching inn, and the carriage entrance is still there in the range. The kitchen belongs to Raymond Hinds, who calls his cooking "Jamwelsh": Jamaican street food alongside home-cooked Welsh dishes. Dishes have included jerk chicken with rice and peas, boneless curry goat, jerk beef flat rib, and a coconut king-prawn curry served in half a pineapple, with beer-battered haddock and a beetroot-and-mixed-bean burger for anyone wanting to stay closer to home. Wye Valley Butty Bach and Sharp's Sea Fury are the regular cask ales. There is a garden, parking, and a play park across the road. Dogs are welcome; "we love the atmosphere and drink selection and our dog is made very welcome too," wrote Stuart Lawes.
The Vine Tree stands at Legar, beside Crickhowell Bridge, a coaching inn from 1857 now given over to farm-to-table cooking and craft ale rather than cask. Its Restaurant Fir is in the Michelin Guide. A recent Sunday table brought potted Cornish crab, moules marinière, a smoked-bacon Scotch egg, roast sirloin, or roast pork shoulder from Padfield Porkies. There is a garden across the road, and the south bank gives views back over the bridge to Crickhowell and Table Mountain.
The village has no shop of its own, so that gap is filled in Crickhowell, a short walk across the Usk bridge. Askew's Family Bakery does bread, cakes and pies; M. T. Cashell has traded as a butcher, greengrocer and deli since 1975 and keeps more than seventy-five cheeses; Bacchus stocks Welsh ales, ciders and spirits; Grenfell & Sons handles groceries. The Rectory Hotel, back in the village, has a restaurant, Sunday lunch and afternoon tea.
The Church of St Catwg is the red-stone building with the crenellated tower, probably 16th-century, though local tradition dates it to the 12th. A church is first recorded here in the sixth century. Inside, a memorial records Ann Lewis, a midwife who died in 1773 and was credited as "an instrument in the hand of providence to bring into this world 716 children"; a window near the font remembers Rachel Jones, who taught Sunday school for forty-five years.
The recreation ground carries the everyday and the very old side by side: a wheelchair-accessible circuit path, play equipment, a basketball hoop and an outdoor table-tennis table, and Garn Goch, a long barrow dated to somewhere between 4000 and 3000 BC. Abergavenny is the practical railhead, on the Welsh Marches line; Service 43 calls at Plas Derwen roughly every two hours, Monday to Saturday, and the B4558 runs along the village edge.
The escarpment walk is about three and a quarter miles long among the limestone, but you do not have to. On a slow afternoon, the towpath and a bench above the limekilns, watching for boats, might be enough.