has all but been eliminated through a mixture of agricultural intensification and afforestation, but a few fragments remain – notably at Poor’s Allotment north of Chepstow. Heathland restoration projects using Exmoor ponies to control scrub encroachment are gradually improving the situation at several other sites above the gorge.
Fish are scarce in the headwaters of the Wye, with only the most resolute of the Atlantic salmon for which the river has been renowned for centuries reaching the shallow pebble beds around Llangurig, where the hardiest salmon overwinter and breed. Edward II ensured that his Scottish campaign in 1308 was provisioned with Wye salmon, but over-fishing and disease has taken its toll.
Trout, bullhead and lampreys join the salmon as the river flows past the confluence with the Afon Marteg above Rhayader, and there is an increase in coarse fish such as roach and dace from Newbridge downstream, but the twaite shad is the Wye’s second most important fish. Like the salmon, this ancient native fish migrates from the sea to breed, its most favoured spawning grounds being the big, sluggish meanders below Hereford.
Few mammals roam the uplands of Mid Wales bordering the Wye: beavers were extinct by the 12th century, red deer were hunted to extinction in medieval times and (allegedly) the last wolf in southern Britain was killed in the Edw Valley near Builth Wells in the 16th century. Even the goats have gone – they grazed too destructively and there is now a sheep monoculture on the high hills.
So the higher reaches of the valley now see only stoats and weasels, with foxes lower down and dormice in the deciduous woodlands. Polecats, largely confined to Mid Wales by the 1950s, are now widespread. Brown hares are present but quite scarce around the Herefordshire Wye, while water voles are declining through the loss of bankside habitats and predation by mink. Grey squirrels finally ousted the reds from the Woolhope Dome in the 1960s, while a few fallow deer roam the woodlands above the lower Wye.
The big success story, however, is the otter, which was in serious decline until the 1970s but has returned to all parts of the river and its tributaries, especially the Lugg, so that the Wye population is the most abundant and most firmly established in lowland Britain. Key factors in this revival are much cleaner river water, abundant food supply and dense vegetation cover for resting and breeding.
Male yellowhammer on the Begwns (Walk 18)
While birds are thinly distributed in the upper valley, especially in winter, there is a surprisingly large number of species to be seen, from the classic summer triumvirate of small birds – wheatear, meadow pipit and skylark – to threatened breeding waders such as golden plover, lapwing and curlew; raptors such as the peregrine falcon, merlin and buzzard; and a large population of ravens.
But the iconic bird of the Wye uplands is the red kite. Mid Wales was the last stronghold for this colourful and majestic bird, its moorland largely devoid of heather and hence lacking red and black grouse and the gamekeepers who would kill kites to protect them. The kite’s recent renaissance has been astonishing and it is now widely distributed in Wales and beyond. Most walks in the upper and middle valley will include a sighting.
A spectacular red kite near Smithfield Farm (Walk 23)
Closer to the river itself, dipper and grey wagtail can frequently be seen in fast-flowing water, while common sandpiper and red-breasted merganser breed in secluded spots downstream from Rhayader and the goosander patrols most of the Welsh Wye. Riverside woodlands hold important populations of pied flycatchers, redstarts and willow warblers from May onwards, with yellowhammers and linnets on the commons above, while the gravelly shallows below Boughrood are colonised by reed buntings, sedge warblers and breeding little ringed plover. Vertical riverbanks here provide nesting sites for kingfishers and big colonies of sand martins.
The woodlands above the lower gorge contain great spotted woodpecker, nuthatch and treecreeper, with hobbies soaring above the Trellech plateau, while the wetter fields near the river provide nest sites for yellow wagtails. There is an important and historic heronry at Piercefield, just above Chepstow, while cormorants roost on the cliffs here and a few pairs of shelduck nest on the riverside.
Small tortoiseshell above Park Wood (Walk 17)
A wide range of butterflies can be found in the valley, from large heath in the blanket bogs of the Elenydd to a much wider range in the valley downstream from Ross-on-Wye – including comma, common blue, small tortoiseshell, ringlet and (in woodland shade) speckled wood – but the best sites are on the Woolhope Dome, with large colonies of the attractive marbled white around Common Hill and a spectacular range of butterflies in Haugh Wood, which is managed by Butterfly Conservation and the Forestry Commission for uncommon species such as white admiral, high brown fritillary, wood white and white letter hairstreak.
The impact of man
Human activity may be concentrated in the lower valley today, but it was not always so: there is relatively little evidence that prehistoric man used the gorge (save for a few Iron Age hillforts and the exceptional bone collections in King Arthur’s Cave), but the uplands around the upper and middle Wye were much more important. The lower slopes of the Black Mountains upstream from Hay contain a number of important Neolithic tombs, at Ffostyll and elsewhere, as well as the Bronze Age stone circle at Pen-y-Beacon.
Evidence of prehistoric settlement is tantalisingly elusive, but Mesolithic hunter-gatherers roamed Elenydd, and the remains of hut circles, clearance cairns and field walls suggest more intensive agricultural use by the late Neolithic era. Bronze Age peoples left burial mounds, cairns and standing stones – including the tall pillar of Maen Serth above the ancient route from Rhayader to Aberystwyth, and the high, remote stone circle at Bwlch y Ddau Faen on the high col between Drygarn Fawr and Gorllwyn.
The Romans left only a light impression on the valley, establishing outposts at Chepstow and Monmouth to control ironworking sites; a Romano-British town at Magnis near Hereford; and a short-lived fort between Hay-on-Wye and Clyro. They had an even more fleeting presence in the uplands above Rhayader, where the marching camp on Esgair Perfedd housed 4000 men late in the first century but may only have been occupied for a matter of weeks before the conquering army moved on.
Offa’s Dyke on Tidenham Chase (Walk 3)
The early medieval period saw an extended struggle for territorial supremacy in the tempestuous Welsh borderlands, symbolised most strikingly by Offa’s great Dyke (thrown up in the eighth century to protect Mercia from incursions by the Welsh) but also marked by Viking raids in the early 10th century as far inland as south Herefordshire. At the same time, however, the farmed landscape continued much as before, with evidence of corn milling as early as the eighth century.
The chronic instability of the region before the Conquest explains the urgency with which the Normans exerted control over their newly acquired territories, building castles at Monmouth and Chepstow within a decade and quickly throwing up the great castles at Goodrich, Hay-on-Wye, Builth Wells and elsewhere as statements of intent as well as defensive structures. The policy was successful in the lowlands, where the Domesday Book shows that by 1086 the Herefordshire plain was settled and prosperous. Higher up the valley, however, a more fraught relationship existed between feudal lords and the hoi polloi, with the court and royal residence at Talgarth, for example, in stark contrast to the ‘Welshries’ in the foothills of the Black Mountains, where the lord’s tenants eked out a living from working narrow arable strips
