Llandrindod Wells Accommodation

More About Llandrindod Wells

Its lake draws walkers and anglers, and the wooded glen of Rock Park still holds the springs the visitors once queued for. The National Cycle Museum, in the old Automobile Palace on Temple Street, has more than 260 machines, from an 1818 hobby horse to modern carbon frames.

Dogs are welcome nearly everywhere and it is one of the best-value corners of Wales. The Heart of Wales railway calls in the middle of town, so you can arrive without a car, though it is only a handful of trains a day each way.

Llandrindod was a scattering of farms until the eighteenth century, when its mineral springs were noticed and the fashion for taking the waters took hold.

The Central Wales Railway arrived in the mid-1860s and made the town. Between then and the First World War it ran as a boom resort, spoken of alongside Bath and Harrogate. The streets you walk today went up in that one long rush.

Visitors queued at the Rock Park pump rooms each morning to drink from the saline, sulphur and magnesium springs while an orchestra played. The fashion passed, as fashions do, but the town it paid for stayed put.

Every August the town still dresses up for its Victorian Festival, in the week running up to the bank holiday. There are costumes, brass bands and street performances, and most of the place joins in rather than watching.

The boating lake is a ten-minute walk from the centre, with a level path right round it and rowing boats out in summer. There are herons on it most mornings and a cafe at one end.

The cycle museum keeps short hours, opening Mondays, Tuesdays and Saturdays through the summer, so ring 01597 825531 before you walk down. The collection fills the old motor showroom it stands in, and it is the sort of place you allow half an hour for and leave an hour and a half later.

Radnorshire’s quiet lanes and sheep farms begin at the edge of town, and you can be on open hill ten minutes after leaving the high street. Builth Wells is twenty minutes south, and Rhayader and its red kites about the same going west.