Carreg Cennen

Crowning a remote crag about 100 meters above the river Cennen in the Breacon Beacons National Park, Carreg Cennen is unmatchable as a wildly romantic Welsh fortress and the most dramatically sited. Sought out by generations of artists and visitors in search of the picturesque, its origin are lost in ancient obscurity. The naturally defensible site may even have been a prehistoric hillfort, and was certainly a stronghold of the Welsh princes.

The present stone castle, however, dates from around 1300, when it was built as an English outpost by one of Edward I's barons. Ingeniously adapted to its rocky hilltop, its core is a high walled, strongly towered enclosure, protected by a succession of pits,drawbridges and gatehouses. Even the natural cave beneath the castle rock, perhaps a prehistoric refuge, is incorporated into the defenses via a gallery passage and can still be explored with torches (you can ask for by the farm at the foot of the hill).

Despite its strength, Carreg Cennen fell to Owain Glyndwr's Welsh insurgents, and during the War of the Roses became a base for bandit Lancastrian, diehards who terrorized the country around. The castle was taken by the Yorkists in 1462, this "robbers den" was laboriously dismantled by 500 men with picks and crowbars. Yet much remains to be seen and the climb from the foot of the rocky hill is rewarded by breathtaking views on the spectacularly landscape of the Black Mountains and the chance to penetrate the intriguing cave beneath  made of the visit at Carreg Cennen always an adventure!