Between 1893 and 1904, more than 180 square kilometres of the Elan Valley was forged into an almighty concatenation of dams and hydro-engineering works, to channel fresh drinking water along a 117.5km course of tunnels and aqueducts to Birmingham. This was a controversial project, but at the time Birmingham was both England's industrial powerhouse and racked with cholera. Something needed to be done. Around 100 people who lived in the Elan Valley were moved on, as homes, farms, a school and a church were demolished to make way for the reservoirs. In honour of their memory, RS Thomas, the fiery Welsh priest and poet, refused to come this way:
There are places in Wales I don't go:
Reservoirs that are the subconscious
Of a people, troubled far down
With gravestones, chapels, villages even.
Some 400,000 visitors a year do come to the Elan Valley, mostly by car in summer months, to picnic and to gawp at the magnificent dams, designed in an inspired baroque style as if they were unknown works by Nicholas Hawksmoor and John Vanbrugh. All but ignored by the "Powys" volume of Pevsner's Buildings of Wales series, these are some of my very favourite British buildings.
To walk up and alongside them is both a privilege and a perennial delight. Luckily, the track bed of the railway, built by Birmingham city engineers to support their Herculean task, is now the Elan Valley Trail, a well surfaced path that allows anyone on foot, bicycle, horse or in a wheelchair to reach all three of the original Elan Valley dams (a fourth, and by far the biggest, the Claerwen, was added in 1952).
For the keen walker, though, there are numerous paths and trails crisscrossing the valley. Many of these interconnect, so it's possible to drop down to the dams from high valley sides at several points, or to cut short a walk when the going gets too tough or rain threatens. It rains, on average, 235 days a year here, yet the wettest months can be a wonderful time to explore the Elan Valley: water, rising high in the lakes, crests the parapets and cascades down the walls of the dams. The sight, and sound, is compulsive and truly sublime.
Water and municipal baroque magnificence aside, the valley is patrolled by red kites, merlins and peregrines. Some 27 species of butterfly, 17 kinds of dragonflies and damsel flies, eight species of orchids, and a gazetteer of ferns and mosses make this their home.
Along with the easygoing, yet hugely dramatic, Elan Valley Trail, I recommend two other walks. The first covers 19.3km and, starting from the helpful Elan Valley visitor centre, takes in three reservoirs. It leads up to the Pen-y-garreg dam, the valve (or control) tower rising from its muscular, water-drenched shoulders like the dome of some forgotten castle by Vanbrugh, or the helmet of a giant and mythical knight. This walk, which I found on the BBC's Weatherman Walking website (bbc.co.uk/wales/mid/sites/walks/pages/elan_valley.shtml), includes a mix of gentle rambling and stiff hill-walking.
For the fitter, and those good at map reading, the walk I chose from the Walking Britain website (walkingbritain.co.uk/walks/walks/walk_b/2498/) is terrific. It might be just 10.9km long, and begin and end in a car park, yet it climbs to a stunning plateau high above the Elan Valley. Seemingly as remote as some boundless Mongolian plain, you - and 45,000 black-faced sheep - are never far from the architectural wonders created by the Birmingham city engineers James Mansergh and George Yourdi. On the way up and down, you'll see the wonderfully handsome Foel (or pumping) Tower at Garreg-Ddu, rising from the lake like some fairytale version of Hawksmoor's circular mausoleum in the grounds of Castle Howard.
When I first came to the Elan Valley, I felt I was discovering its wonders as if no one else had ever seen them. Ignored by architectural guidebooks, here was some of the best architecture, walking, wildlife and landscape I had yet known - even if RS Thomas might have condemned me to hell via death by drowning in a Welsh valley without so much as a "chocklit" eclair for comfort.