Holiday Cottages In Powys

Powys has over 1,100 self-catering cottages on selfcatering.co.uk, from hill farms above the Wye to stone houses in old market towns. This is big, green, upland country covering most of mid Wales, with the Brecon Beacons in the south and the Cambrian Mountains at its heart. Almost 800 cottages take dogs and well over 400 have a hot tub.

Best areas and towns in Powys

Powys is the largest county in Wales and almost entirely rural, so its cottages are spread thinly across a lot of hill country rather than packed into a coastline. The busiest bases sit in the old spa and market towns of the south and the Wye valley, with a second scattering up towards the Cambrian Mountains and the Montgomeryshire hills.

• Rhayader: a small market town on the upper Wye, the gateway to the Elan Valley reservoirs and red kite country
• Brecon: the natural capital of the south, a handsome market town right under the Beacons
• Hay-on-Wye: the famous book town on the English border, host of its own literary festival
• Talybont-on-Usk and Crickhowell: walking and canal villages in the Usk valley below the high tops
• Talgarth and Clyro: quiet places in the Black Mountains foothills, an easy reach of Hay
• Llandrindod Wells and Builth Wells: Victorian spa towns in the green middle of the county, with Builth home to the Royal Welsh Show
• Machynlleth: a lively town near the Dyfi estuary, the old seat of Owain Glyndwr
• Montgomery, Knighton and Llanfair Caereinion: border and Montgomeryshire towns along Offa's Dyke and the Banwy
• Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant: a village under the hills with Wales's tallest waterfall on its doorstep
• Saint Harmon and Nantmel: hamlets in the high Radnorshire sheep country near Rhayader

There is no single resort here. The pleasure of Powys is the spread of it, so pick a town for the landscape on its doorstep rather than for the place itself.

Powys countryside, mountains and the Brecon Beacons

This is one of the emptiest and highest parts of Wales. The south of the county lies inside Bannau Brycheiniog National Park, better known to many as the Brecon Beacons, a long wall of grass and old red sandstone whose summit, Pen y Fan, is the highest point in southern Britain at 886 metres. North of Brecon the land rolls up into the Cambrian Mountains, a vast, lonely plateau of moorland, forestry and reservoirs that drains east into the Wye and west towards the sea. The Elan Valley above Rhayader is the best-known corner of it, a chain of Victorian dams and lakes circled by red kites. Waterfalls are a Powys speciality: Pistyll Rhaeadr, near Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant in the north, drops about 240 feet and is often called the tallest in Wales. Offa's Dyke runs the length of the eastern border, and rivers thread the whole county, the Wye, the Usk and the Severn all rising in or near its hills.

Things to do in Powys

The walking is the main event, from a gentle towpath stroll along the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal to the long pull up Pen y Fan. For a wet day, Powis Castle, above Welshpool, is a medieval fortress turned grand house with world-famous terraced gardens hanging over the valley. King Arthur's Labyrinth, near Machynlleth, takes you by boat deep into a hillside on the trail of Welsh legend. The Elan Valley visitor centre explains the great dams, Hay-on-Wye is a day in itself for anyone who loves secondhand books, and the rivers and reservoirs are good for fishing, paddling and birdwatching. The skies here are some of the darkest in Britain, and much of the national park is an International Dark Sky Reserve.

When to visit Powys

Late spring and early summer are lovely, when the hills are green, the lambs are out and the long days suit walking. July and August are warmest and bring the festivals, with the Hay Festival in late spring and the Royal Welsh Show at Builth Wells in July. Autumn turns the forestry and the valley woods gold and is a fine time for the reservoirs and the waterfalls, which run full after rain. Winter is quiet, cold and often clear on the tops, and the dark nights are best for stargazing. Whatever the month, pack for weather that changes fast at height.

Dog-friendly and hot-tub cottages in Powys

More than 700 of the cottages in Powys take dogs, and more than 400 have a hot tub. Browse the places that take dogs or places with a hot tub to narrow your search.

Getting to Powys

Powys sits in the middle of Wales, sharing a long border with England. There is no motorway and no airport in the county, so most people arrive by car: the A470 runs north to south through Brecon and the heart of it, the A483 follows the eastern edge through Builth and Llandrindod, and the A44 and A40 cross it east to west. The Heart of Wales line is one of the prettiest railways in Britain, calling at Llandrindod, Builth Road and Knighton, while the Cambrian line serves Machynlleth in the north-west. The nearest large airports are Cardiff and Birmingham, each a couple of hours away.

Useful links

• Bannau Brycheiniog National Park
• Powys County Council
• Visit Mid Wales
• Elan Valley

Powys is a large, landlocked county in the middle of Wales, by far the biggest in the country by area and one of the most sparsely populated in Britain. It stretches from the edge of Snowdonia in the north to the Brecon Beacons in the south, and from the Cambrian Mountains in the west to a long border with the English counties of Shropshire and Herefordshire in the east. The modern county was formed in 1974 from the three historic counties of Montgomeryshire, Radnorshire and Brecknockshire, and the names still cling to its different corners.

This is upland Wales at its most open. Much of the south lies within Bannau Brycheiniog National Park, where Pen y Fan rises above grassy ridges of old red sandstone, while the centre and north are filled by the high, lonely moorland of the Cambrian Mountains and the reservoirs of the Elan Valley. Three of the great rivers of Wales and the borders, the Wye, the Usk and the Severn, rise in these hills. There is no coast and no city, and the principal places are small market and former spa towns such as Brecon, Newtown, Welshpool, Llandrindod Wells and the book town of Hay-on-Wye.

The county has a long and contested history. Offa's Dyke, the eighth-century earthwork between Mercia and the Welsh kingdoms, runs the length of its eastern edge, and castles and hillforts mark centuries of border warfare. Machynlleth was where Owain Glyndwr held a Welsh parliament in 1404. Today the land is worked mostly for sheep and forestry, and Powys draws visitors for its walking, its dark skies and the quiet scale of its hills.