Twm Tobacco's Grave

A simple stone slab in the middle of nowhere marks where a local legend was buried. Twm Tobacco's grave sits alone in Powys countryside, a few miles outside Builth Wells, and it's the kind of spot that makes you wonder why you've bothered to find it - until you're actually standing there.

Twm Tobacco was a 17th-century highwayman who robbed travellers along these remote Mid Wales roads. Whether he was a Robin Hood figure or simply a thief depends which version of the story you believe, but locals have remembered him for centuries. The grave itself is unremarkable - stone, weathered, easy to miss if you're not looking properly - but that's rather the point. There's something oddly moving about it, this solitary marker for a man who disrupted the peace of the area so thoroughly that people still talk about him.

The walk to reach it is the real reward. You're looking at quiet farmland and open moorland, the kind of landscape that hasn't changed much since Twm was actually robbing people on it. It's free, obviously, and takes maybe twenty minutes from the nearest parking, depending on the route you take.

Worth a detour if you're camping or glamping at one of the nearby sites like Fforest Fields or Celtic Woodland Holidays - combines nicely with a walk in the Wye Valley. But don't expect a visitor centre or any fuss. This is just history left where it fell.