The Route
The route follows some of the course of the River Usk and runs from a start point at Caerleon, not far upstream from the rivermouth at Uskmouth, south of Newport, up the river valley, with interesting detours, to Brecon in the north.
It passes from Roman Caerleon uphill, climbing the Wentwood ridge, to descend into gentle dairy pastureland, visiting the riverside towns of Usk and Abergavenny, where it enters the Brecon Beacons National Park, follows the towpath of the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal, bypassing Crickhowell where it climbs again providing views of the Black Mountains falling back to the canal towpath again. Just after Llangynidr it climbs again towards Talybont Reservoir with fine views of the highest part of the Brecon Beacons on the way. Passing below the reservoir the route climbs towards Talybont Forest rejoining the canal at Pencelli. The route ends at Brecon.
The route is waymarked using a symbol of an otter's head, an animal that any walker may well see on the river. A guidebook for the route is available from bookshops.
More adventurous walkers can follow further up the River Usk towards its source in the Carmarthenshire Fans below Fan Brycheiniog in the far west of the National Park.
Read more about this topic: Usk Valley Walk
Famous quotes containing the word route:
“By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an eidolon, named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule—
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of space—out of time.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“no arranged terror: no forcing of image, plan,
or thought:
no propaganda, no humbling of reality to precept:
terror pervades but is not arranged, all possibilities
of escape open: no route shut,”
—Archie Randolph Ammons (b. 1926)