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The Duhonw runs off the north side of it and joins the Wye just below the town. Llangammarch Wells sits round on the west, where the Irfon comes down off the same hills. Both are small, quiet and within ten minutes of Builth.

The B4519 from Garth over to Upper Chapel crosses the whole of Epynt. It climbs out of the fields into open ground and stays up there for miles, with grass and sky on either side and hares on the verges. The Epynt Way visitor centre stands beside it, about halfway across.

Epynt was not always empty. Until 1940 the top of it carried a Welsh-speaking farming community, living in scattered holdings rather than villages, and some families had been there for generations.

In 1940 the War Office took the mountain for a training area. Fifty-four farms and a pub were cleared, and more than two hundred people were told to find somewhere else to live. The last families were out by the end of that June.

What they left became the Sennybridge Training Area, the largest military training ground in Wales. The chapels went and the cemeteries with them, and a community that had held on up here for generations was gone in a single summer. The words Cofiwch Epynt, remember Epynt, were painted up afterwards and are painted still.

The army has been there ever since and the ranges are in use. The B4519 stayed a public road through all of it. A waymarked route was later opened right round the outside of the training area, so that people could walk and ride the edge of it again.

That route is the Epynt Way. It runs about forty miles right round the perimeter of the range, and walkers, riders and cyclists may all use it. You can join it at any number of points and do as much or as little as you like.

The visitor centre sits on the B4519 between Upper Chapel and Garth, and it opens every day from eight until six. Parking is free, there are toilets and a picnic area, and a two-mile circular walk starts from the door. That walk gives you Pen y Fan, the highest mountain in southern Britain, along the skyline with the Black Mountains beyond.

One thing to know before you go up. The ground on the south-east side of the B4519 is a live firing range and must not be entered. When the red flags are flying the road normally stays open, but you should not leave it.

Very occasionally the road itself closes for a short spell while long-range firing is on. Keep to it, or to the waymarked Epynt Way. If you come across any military debris, do not pick it up.

Down off the mountain it is a different country again. The rivers Duhonw and Irfon run green and sheltered where Epynt is bare, and Llangammarch Wells and Garth are quiet places to come back to. Builth is ten minutes from either.