MONMOUTHSHIRE & BRECON CANALS

35 miles of unequalled South Wales scenery accompanies you as you follow the Monmouthshire & Brecon Canals from Brecon down the Usk Valley

- MARTIN LUDGATE

Often our Canal Boat cruise guides start out from a canal junction, where the route we’re going to follow has its connection with the rest of the waterways network. But we can’t do that this time, because the route of the Monmouthshire & Brecon Canals (or the ‘Mon & Brec’ in popular parlance) is a little different…

This is a landlocked navigation, unconnected to any other waterways, or for that matter to the coast. But while that means that at the moment the only floating visitors are holiday hirers, trailboaters, those in small craft, and those who have chosen to limit themselves to the Mon & Brec (not that many of them would see this beautiful waterway as ‘limiting’!) it certainly doesn’t seem to have had too serious an impact on its popularity. Indeed, with its five hire fleets plus several marinas and popular mooring spots, it’s living proof to those restoring similar waterways elsewhere that being an isolated waterway needn’t be a bar to a success, even though it’s just 35 miles long with only a handful of locks – albeit that may all change one day…

But first a cautionary tale about its apparently modest length: a friend of mine once planned a week’s hireboat trip on the Mon & Brec with a bunch of friends. Being active folks in their 20s who were used to cruising decent distances every day, they figured they could probably get there and back twice in a week! A few hours into their cruise, they changed their plans. It’s not that the narrow, often winding and sometimes shallowish route is difficult to navigate – you won’t spend your time poling the boat off the mud or diving down the weed-hatch – but it just isn’t possible to rush it. And who would want to, with the canal following the spectacular scenery of the Usk valley for almost its entire length.