We are just back from a very lovely week in Crickhowell. We ended up in Crickhowell in the Breckon Beacons because at the beginning of the year we were looking for a holiday house that would suit 10 people that wasn’t too far away for all the different families that were going and Crickhowell ended up suiting the bill.
Crickhowell - a potted history
Crickhowell, also known as Crug Hywel in Welsh, is a charming market town located in the Brecon Beacons National Park in Powys, Wales. Nestled on the banks of the River Usk, Crickhowell boasts a picturesque setting amidst rolling hills, lush green valleys, and stunning natural beauty. It lies approximately 5 miles (8 kilometers) southeast of the town of Brecon and 15 miles (24 kilometers) west of Abergavenny.
The town is renowned for its historic architecture, with many buildings dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries. The high street is lined with traditional stone houses, charming shops, and quaint pubs, creating - on a sunny day especially - an idyllic atmosphere with people sat outside the Dragon and the Britannia Inn. Apparently locals have long battled the arrival of a potential Coop, as they love their independent traders. One of the notable landmarks in Crickhowell is the 13th-century Crickhowell Castle, now in ruins but still offering a glimpse into the town's rich past.
Crickhowell is also famous for its annual event, the Green Man Festival (this year, 2023, it's on the 17th - 20th August). This music and arts festival takes place in the nearby Glanusk Park and attracts a diverse range of performers and attendees from around the world. The festival showcases a vibrant mix of live music, comedy, literature, theater, and visual arts, making it a significant cultural event in the region.
The town has a long and storied history, having been an important market town and a center for trade and commerce in the past. It played a role in the turbulent times of Welsh history, witnessing conflicts and power struggles between Welsh princes and English invaders. Today, Crickhowell maintains its historical charm, offering visitors a peaceful retreat in a beautiful Welsh countryside setting.
Wern Farm
We arrived at Wern Farm and were very pleasantly surprised; it had been so long since we booked it we had forgotten many of the details. The house was beautiful inside and out. It was a great location for walking as it was basically at the foot of Table Mountain with the footpath to get onto the mountain outside the front door of the house. From the front door to the top of Sugar Loaf Mountain and back again was about 4 1/2 hours.
We were a bit concerned about what there would be to do for the kids; we had five kids with us, ranging from 1 year old to 9, but we need not have worried. The house had a lovely garden so we spent a lot of time outside as the weather was so good but we also visited some very lovely attractions.
Horse riding
We had booked horseriding in advance at Cantref Adventure Farm. We started a day there with horse riding lessons - or rather pony riding lessons. It was 20 minutes of pony riding but it took quite a while to get everyone set up and onto their horses and we were worried that would come out of the 20 minutes but it definitely didn't. Once they were ready to start the lady made a point of announcing she was starting a stopwatch so the 20 minutes was actually fully on horseback, horseriding. I thought they would maybe just go round and round the arena over and over again but they took some different routes and then they did a few activities where the kids had to turn themselves around in the saddle and sit in different directions, or stretch across the horse to each his tail of his main so testing their confidence in different positions.
As we were there we thought we might as well see what the rest of the farm park had to offer. My husband to be honest thought it was going to be quite expensive for not a lot, as it was about £50 for a family fof 5 (with a free baby). We were with a family with a 3 year old who did need to pay for them our moneys worth or that there wouldn't be much to do, we all had an absolutely loveliest day. You know you've had a good time when you have hardly any photos on your phone at the end of the day.
It very much feels like a farm diversification project and I don't mean that in a bad way. The lady who "writes the theme tune, sings the theme tune" is clearly a sheep farmer who has turned a hand to opening the farm for kids. There are lots of play areas but there was pig racing, bottle feeding lambs with a show that was educational, and characters dressed up from PAW Patrol. There was a fantastic sledge slide which the kids could've spent all day on, a zip wire, and animals such as horses, goats, alpacas and more.
There were just lots of relatively simple activities that really kept little ones - I'm talking about ages 3 to 9 - occupied all day. Even the one-year-old had lots of fun. Things like shooting a goal through a target with cut out holes, and an adventure playground kept everyone entertained for ages. Another highlight was the enclosed raised area acting like a trampoline but with spacehoppers in it (shown above), along with the swamp ride which was a rowing boat you took around a windy little path - that yeah, in in the sunshine, smelled a bit of swamp. At one point we thought we'd lost my daughters bag (ends up it jad just gone with her cousins) and all of the staff were so helpful and lovely, announcing it over the tannoy, looking in all the offices and offering to take our details to send it to us if they found it.
Oh yes! How could I almost forget - there was a big soft play. My daughter, whose toddler years were during the lockdowns, often feels robbed of softplay in her "youth"(!) and absolutely loved that. We spent ages in there - but with the cafe in the same building that was fine. There was a section for under 4s, which our 1 year old loved, and a section for everyone else.
The National Showcaves vs. Cantref Adventure Farm
On a different day we went to The National Showcaves. Whereas the farm park had cost around £50 for a family of five the National Showcaves was nearer £70.
And I'm afraid to say, it wasn't as good a day out. The caves of course are spectacular and I'm sure they take a lot of work to look after (although also I guess they looked after themselves for thousands of years...). There was a lot to learn there, with lots of interesting history about Bronze Age villages, the discovery of the caves, and some of the best explanatory videos I've seen about things like how fossils are formed, but overall the kids weren't as entertained as they had been on the previous day out.
A big highlight of the show caves is the dinosaur park, which claims to be one of the biggest in the world - and they certainly are jam packed in there. Several are animated / move, and they are quite impressive so it is a good way to guide people from one cave to the next as it's something for the kids to look out on the walk up the hills, but they didn't really give you anything to do for very long.
Something to note when you're booking your tickets for the show caves is that you book a slot - but before you confirm it, they will warn you that you need to be there 15 minutes before that slot and that you ideally should be there 15 minutes before that again to to get a snack but I think they probably just say that to make sure you're there 15 minutes early rather than the full 30 minutes early.
When we were there it was reasonably quite quiet so it wasn't a problem but I think the idea is that you can walk in, then around the caves, and back out of the same exit without it getting too crowded.
You can't take pushchairs around the caves but we still took ours from the car to the entrance of the cave as there is still a little way and you're hanging around for a while and perhaps going to the loo. We then used a baby carrier in the cave. We used the push chair again as you walk through the dinosaurs, but then before the next cave you need to park up again this time you'll be carrying your bambino for about 40 minutes as you go in Cathedral cave, out and along to Bone Cave, then back to where you left your pushchair. (You could do it quicker than that - depending on the queue for the Bone Cave - but I took my time in the Cathedral Cave as I absolutely loved the music, the waterfalls and my - very heavy! - baby being in a carrier for once, staring wide eyed at everything around him!).
There is one cave - the Bone Cave - where you have to wear hard hats and so we were wary about taking a baby in there, but it was fine. It ends up the hard hats are just for the low man-made walkway to access the cave and then the actual entrance to the cave itself. I'm 5 foot three and I barely had to stoop but if you were much bigger than that you would need to. And there were plenty of people bumping their head so it was just as well to have helmets. There aren't many helmets so then you have to wait until some other people have come back out again before you can use their helmet to go in but we think as much as anything this is to limit the amount of people in the cave. Once you're in there, the head height is massive, so it's just the walkway that's the issue.
There's also a farm park at the National Showcaves - or rather, a "shire horse centre". This also has a Play Barn which did go down well - one for ages 3 to 6 and another for ages 6 to 9. The kids did like that but it just didn't keep them occupied for that long. As you leave the caves to take a road "train" for 5 minutes to the farm park (supplied by the Wales Air Ambulance, so a donation is appreciated) you see a sign warning you there are no loos at the farm park... but actually there is a kids loo. They don't shout about it - I guess they don't want people just dropping in at the farm park - but in a kiddie loo emergency, you don't have to catch a train or leg it up a steep hill.
One thing that did curtail our visit at the farm park was that there was NO shade. We were there on a day that was maybe in the very low 20s in temperature and we could've really done with some shade. It was just a big expense of green space with a playground and lots of animals roaming free in (we did love the animals - it made you feel like you're walking through a Safari Park of goats and sheep and the odd alpaca).
There was an outdoor chess / draughts board and that was quite a highlight for son and myself.
Just before we left we went for a cold drink to try and get out of the sun, back up the hill at the caves (as the land train stops just after 2pm) and we did find panning for gold which was also advertised as a highlight - but it's quite a small feature really and didn't capture interest for long - but maybe as much as anything the adults were just ready to go by then.
Llangorse Lake (or Llangors Lake)
One day we went to a lake which has a common right next to it, so it’s great for picnics, running around and flying kites. We hired a rowboat for £14 for 30 minutes to go out onto the lake, but you can also hire pedalos or canoes / kayaks. Ends up rowing is quite hard! What we had thought would just be a relatively dull but relaxing week in Wales ended up including our kids going out in a row boat, riding a horse for the first time and just generally having a really special time.
That morning we had had a lazy morning at home, but the rest of our party had gone to a walled garden. Apparently it was very lovely, not very pushchair friendly, and more of a nursery set up to sell plants. But if you like garden centres, it was very pretty and worth a visit - just not quite a "garden" to wander around.
Crickhowell Art Trail - Open Studios 2023
We were in Crickhowell over the late May bank holiday and there was an art trail on, so we made a point to wander around some of the exhibits. In doing so we found a lovely café called Latte Da who were a venue for an artist. It ight be a cheesy name but it actually made it quite memorable when we told other people about how amazing the breakfast was there.
Latte-Da Coffee and Kitchen
My daughter was in her element with Nutella pancakes and the American pancakes were also amazing. We went back there with more of out party at the end of the week and the eggs Royale (and basically everything) was also great. The staff were lovely and the man we met on both occasions - so I assume is the owner - had a really bothered vibe, as in, he was still running this café for the love of it.
Where to eat in Crickhowell
On the topic of the food and drink, the rest of our party had some fish and chips from Yummy Kitchen, Crickhowell, which were apparently very nice.
Someone recommended to us the Nantyffin Cider Mill. We emailed and rang several times to make a booking, but in the end found out from their website they're open Thurs-Sun so we just turned up on Thursday evening and got a nice table outside with no problems.
To be honest we found the food expensive for the quality of it - perhaps they had fallen foul to Covid. My husband and I had a burger and fish and chips which were £16 - £17... which for us had to be something really quite nice. The fish and chips was nice, and there was nothing wrong with the burger, but it wasn’t anything amazing, so really we would have been happier paying £12 for each. But we got a table by the play ground which kept the kids entertained. Kids meals were around £7 each and the chicken nuggets looks like they were packed with chicken.
Sugar Loaf Vineyard
One afternoon we went to the Sugar loaf Vineyards, as obviously as grape growers ourselves we're always interested in seeing how other British vineyards are going about their work.
I loved the set up - I absolutely loved the fact that you could turn up unannounced, see the vineyard, wander around the vines and go into the wine bar and have some food or taste a selection of their wines. It was £5 for a small taste of five different wines or £10 for a slightly larger taste. I think this is an absolutely fantastic way to let people try the wines without consuming too much alcohol.
Our party weren't super keen on the white wines, but those who tried the tastings quite liked the rosé and really liked the red. Their sparkling uses one of the grapes that we grow but you couldn’t buy that by the glass, you can only buy it by the bottle, and we couldn’t quite bring ourselves to buy a £30 bottle of sparkling when he hadn’t loved the other white wines, so I'm still curious about that one. But if you want to wonder around a vineyard and then stop for a drink or a lovely piece of cake (or in my case a non-alcoholic beer as I was driving), this is a very lovely way to spend an hour.
Crickhowell: plenty to do
Overall, I had such an unexpectedly lovely week in Crickhowell! We wandered around the shops briefly again on our last day but could have spent much longer there as there are some lovely independent traders. It's all surrounded by stunning views and I left feeling very relaxed and rejuvinated!
