Britain’s most scenic drives: The Black Mountain Pass, Brecon Beacons

On a quest to find the country's most glorious roads, Annunciata Elwes explores The Black Mountain Pass on the Brecon Beacons.

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Gospel Pass, Black Mountains, Powys, Wales, United Kingdom
(Image credit: Alamy Stock Photo)

Turner identified the clifftop ruins of Carreg Cennen Castle with the Sublime — that 18th-century philosophical notion of beauty, Nature and a higher power — and it can still be felt here today.

Aerial vista by drone of Carreg Cennen Castle,

This Marcher Lords’ stronghold was probably built following the death of the last native Prince of Wales in 1282 (that tradition runs deep; our current Prince bought a house nearby in 2006). Together with the equally sublime Tywi Valley, shaped by Wales’s longest river, is among the thrilling sights along the Black Mountain Pass, and it's seen perfectly from what is one of Britain's most scenic drives.

View from Foel Fawr to North Brecon Beacons

Twisting and climbing with aerobatic elegance through the sheep-speckled moors of the eastern Brecon Beacons like some ancient roller coaster to a height of 1,624ft at Foel Fawr, the route, between Llandovery and Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen, is only about 21 miles, but it certainly packs in the gasp-factor, with the landscape’s otherworldly glory only tempered by occasional warnings to take it araf (slow) inscribed on the tarmac.

The Afon Clydach river in the Black Mountain in South Wales UK as it passes under a bridge on the A4069

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Annunciata Elwes
Annunciata Elwes

Annunciata is director of contemporary art gallery TIN MAN ART and an award-winning journalist specialising in art, culture and property. Previously, she was Country Life’s News & Property Editor. Before that, she worked at The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, researched for a historical biographer and co-founded a literary, art and music festival in Oxfordshire. Lancashire-born, she lives in Hampshire with a husband, two daughters and a mischievous pug.