On a railway route that’s survived against all odds, Ben Lerwill embarks on a journey along the 150-year-old Heart of Wales Line, combining train travel with hiking trails—and a dash of unpredictability.
We’re somewhere between the tiny stations of Llanwrda and Llangadog when the two-carriage train I’m on shudders to a brief halt. It’s late afternoon and the Welsh countryside is sun-drenched and drowsy. Outside, bumblebees bump around the wildflowers and a woodpecker skims into the tree canopy; the valleys beyond are high-sided and shade-dappled. Such is the pace of travel on the Heart of Wales Line.
This is very much what I’m here for. The line weaves a three-and-half-hour, 121-mile (194 kilometers) route through the slow, sheep-soundtracked counties of Powys and Carmarthenshire, tracing a diagonal wiggle as if drawn by a child’s crayon from the English border down to the Welsh south coast.
Open in full since 1868, it has 30 stations along its route, 16 of which are request-only; if you want to get off, inform the conductor, and if you’re on the platform, simply hold your arm out. Crowds are notably absent on board and—even better—there’s a sinuous, station-to-station hiking trail that broadly follows the line throughout. If you’re happy to forgo any ideas of bullet-train efficiency, or any pressing need to get from village A to village B, this undervisited region is a rural rail-lover’s dream.
At least, it’s a dream when the service is running. My plan is to spend two full days following the line from north to south, partly by train and partly on foot. Day one is to involve an initial 40-minute rail trip from the start point of Craven Arms, an English market town near the Welsh border, then a long yomp between Llanbister Road station and the town of Llandridnod Wells.
But when I arrive in Craven Arms for the mid-morning train, the platform is empty save for a woman in a floral coat collecting litter. On seeing me, she points at the bilingual electric display above my head. It reads: “10.32 Cancelled/ Canslwyd”.
“Landslip on the line,” she says, with cheery matter-of-factness. “Be cleared up by tomorrow. There’s a bus replacement service today.” Those words are enough to darken the mood of any seasoned UK rail traveler.
And so it goes, that my journey along one of the UK’s most scenic railways begins in a near-empty minibus speeding down narrow country lanes. At some unmarked point, as we pass flowering meadows to a soundtrack of tinny ‘80s songs, we cross into Wales, then half-an-hour after setting off, the radio reception cuts out—as does the driver’s GPS. He pulls over and turns to me and the other two passengers. “Anyone know the way?” he asks.
Some 20 minutes of haphazard navigation later, I’m deposited at Llanbister Station, surrounded by hills, in what might be termed the middle of pastoral nowhere. I see a farm, tree-lined ridges, a hiking fingerpost, and little else. Lambs are bleating and chiffchaffs are calling. I shoulder my backpack and re-lace my boots. Now, the journey can begin in earnest.
The hiking path that joins together most of its stations (those it doesn’t pass directly are reachable by link footpaths) is a far more recent introduction, opening only in 2019. The path was the brainchild of two organizations—the Heart of Wales Line Development Company and the Heart of Wales Line Travellers’ Association—and took four years to complete. As a trail, it’s reasonably well-signed, although rarely linear and regularly filled with climbs and descents. As a means of getting away from it all, it’s heaven-sent.
I discover all of this on my first day’s walk to Llandrindod Wells, which serves up seven blissful, if draining, hours of sloping meadows, remote farm tracks and clear-running streams. Red kites circle on the thermals and orange-tip butterflies flit between wild orchids. I pass a yew-ringed medieval church, a hillside Quaker meeting house, and a campsite with a donkey—but not a single other walker. When I stop at a field gate to eat, I start counting the cotton-wool sheep scattered across the view. I quit when I reach 100.
I meet the southbound train again with no drama, and an hour later arrive at Llandeilo’s stylish 18th-century Cawdor Hotel, a former coaching inn. The town is another historical spot, its high street a splash of colorful houses and Welsh flags, and the hotel suitably restorative for a dusty-booted rail-rider in need of sustenance and sleep.
Some 18 miles of track still stretch south from here to Llanelli, the end point of the Heart of Wales Line, but the sporadic timetable means I don’t make it that far the next day. Instead, the only thing left to do is to retrace my route, buying a return ticket back up the spine of this rare, under-traveled railway, and watching the valleys and sheep pastures unfurl again.
The spring sunshine I’ve experienced might not come as standard, but the Heart of Wales Line can guarantee rewardingly quiet trails, a filling slice of rural adventure, and more than a spare seat on board.
