Carreg Cennen Castle

There are few castles in Wales which can boast a more spectacular location than Carreg Cennen. Its stout, weatherbeaten ruins crown a precipitous limestone crag overlooking the remote Black Mountain in the western corner of the Brecon Beacons National Park.

The castle, although damaged over the centuries by warring forces and the elements, is charged with a sense of the past which eclipses many a better preserved historic site. The castle's origins are shrouded in obscurity. The existing stronghold, dating from around 1300, led a chequered life, falling into Welsh and English hands during the troubled medieval period.

Its fate was sealed in 1462 when this "robbers' den" was partially dismantled by 500 men with picks and crowbars. As today's visitors soon appreciate, an attack on the castle must have presented a daunting prospect. There is only one way up, a steep, grassy hill protected by a complicated system of defences. Approach from the opposite direction is impossible, for the castle tiptoes on the edge of a sheer 100 mtr cliff. A visit to this eagle's nest of a castle is an adventure below as well as above ground. A passageway cut into the cliff face leads to a natural cave beneath the fortifications which may have been inhabited in prehistoric times.

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