The Elidir Trail Falls, Powys, South Wales, Autumn
Our last full day in South Wales.
We’d previously enjoyed some waterfall action at Cwm Rhaeadr near Llandovery. But that was just one waterfall, even though it was a mighty one.
Deep in the heart of the Brecon Beacons National Park one can find Waterfall Country, home to a myriad of waterfalls. Easily the most popular trail around here is the Four Falls Walk, which we’ve done before way back in 2018. However, word is that this particular trail has become even busier.
Instead, for our last full day, we elected to walk the Elidir Trail. Somewhat less busy but the waterfalls are no less impressive.
We were not disappointed, and beautiful light for woodland and gorge walking aided us for our final day.
All photos shot on my Fujifilm X-T2 using my Vivitar “Series 1” 28–105mm f2.8–3.8 zoom and Laowa 9mm f2.8 prime lenses. RAWs converted in Capture One for iPad, then developed and finalised in Affinity Photo for iPad.
The Elidir Trail Falls, Powys, South Wales, Autumn by Ian Cylkowski is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
The Elidir Trail gorge heads upstream where it forks into two distinct sections. The shorter branch is a simple diversion to the viewing point for the main waterfall of the area, called Sgwd Gwladys. After a day or two of rain, the gorge was wet and the atmosphere was moist. Thankfully, that resulted in beautiful soft reflected light in this autumnal scene.
An ultra-wide composition of Sgwd Gwladys, and possible one of the greatest waterfall photos I’ve ever managed to shoot. A dead tree provided nutrition for a whole collection of fungi, serving as my foreground interest with Sgwd Gwladys gracefully rushing over a shelf in the distance.
We gingerly navigated the slippery and mossy boulders to get as close to the falls as possible whilst the light shining down into the gorge was still complementary. Rusty autumn leaves provide colour contrast in the foreground.
Further up the main gorge created by the River Neath (or Afon Nedd), a group of early-20s lads examined a potential swimming and diving spot.
Autumn in a micro scene, as the afternoon sun pierced the clouds above for a particularly strong burst of light.
Here the gorge and river widens up, allowing more autumnal light to pour into the scene on these two cataracts.
Towards the top of the Elidir Trail an almost impossibly perfect autumnal waterfall scene emerges as we clamber down the gorge to gawp at Scŵd Ddwli.
The name of these falls, Scŵd Ddwli, translates roughly to “gushing falls”, which we found to be wholly accurate. Around the edge of the plunge pool, rusty autumnal leaves had gathered making for a lovely composition.
Though we neared the end of the Elidir Trail, and the clouds had gradually covered the gorge, we got a final explosion of light from the late afternoon sun, shooting beams across the falls.