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You come to Powys for the space. Walk out of either town and within five minutes you are on sheep pasture and open hill, on tracks people were using long before the roads were surfaced. Friday is sale day in Builth, when the farms come in and the cafes fill up by nine.

It is a fair drive from anywhere, and that is what keeps this country quiet even in August. The Heart of Wales railway crosses it between Shrewsbury and Swansea, calling at Llanwrtyd and at Builth Road. Bring boots, take the single-track lanes slowly and let a few days go past without a plan.

For hundreds of years these hills were droving country. Farmers walked cattle, sheep and even flocks of geese along the high roads to the markets of the Midlands and London. It took a fortnight or more, and the trade is documented as far back as the fourteenth century.

Both towns were gathering points. The herds came down off the farms and the cattle were shod for the road. Each cloven hoof took a thin iron plate to save it on the walk east, and the smithies along the route did little else in season.

The drovers carried money as well as livestock, and out of that grew banks of their own. The Aberystwyth and Tregaron Bank opened in 1810 and was known as Banc y Ddafad Ddu, the Bank of the Black Sheep. Its notes were engraved with one sheep for every pound they were worth.

The railways finished it. Once a beast could go to market by train in a day, nobody was going to walk it there in a fortnight. The drives had stopped by the end of the nineteenth century.

The old green roads over the hills are still here and you can walk them. Do two miles or ten and turn back when you like, out on grassy tops where the views run for miles and you can go all afternoon without meeting anyone.

Builth still sells sheep on Smithfield Road every Friday, and the ring can take more than five thousand of them in a morning. The gates open at half past seven and the sale starts at quarter past twelve. Stand at the rail for ten minutes and you will see the town’s real business.

Llanwrtyd is the smaller and higher of the two, up where the Irfon comes off the moor. Builth is the bigger, with the shops and a riverside walk along the Wye. Neither takes ten minutes to walk end to end, and you can see open hill from the middle of both.

The Royal Welsh Showground stands across the bridge from Builth at Llanelwedd, and it is busy long after the July show has gone. Sales, rallies, trials and a winter fair fill it through the rest of the year, and the 2026 show drew its usual two hundred thousand.

Bring the dog and bring boots. This is country where a wet Tuesday still gives you a decent walk, and where open hill starts five minutes out of either town.