Your holiday on the Mon & Brec Canal

The pace of your Brecon canal holiday in Wales is entirely up to you. You can walk to the village for morning papers and set off after breakfast, or move off through the early morning mist with a bacon sandwich and take in a few locks before a pint and lunch in a canal side pub garden. Or just enjoy being lured along this lovely winding and meandering waterway, admiring the views and thinking about your evening mooring place, watching the sunset and listening to the magical sounds of the birds and sheep around you, and not a human in sight!

The Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal (Mon and Brec for short) is arguably the most beautiful and unspoiled canal in Britain to experience canal holidays and is located within the beautiful Brecon Beacons National Park. The canal is 35 miles long and runs from Brecon in the North, down the Usk Valley, to just South of Pontypool. It has six locks for you to enjoy operating, one on the way up to Brecon, and the others at the lovely and secluded stretch leading down into Llangynidr.

There are lift bridges for you to wind up and down and you can even make the traffic stop to give way to canal boats, when you operate the electric lift bridge in Talybont on Usk! The canal is surrounded by the most beautiful scenery and you can wake up with a new view everyday on your canal holiday.

There are many good pubs along the way and lots of interesting villages to explore on your canal holiday. The industrial heritage of the canal is still visible in many places with the remains of the lime kilns and old tramways that brought coal, iron and limestone down from the surrounding hills. In our complimentary canal guide book you will find short walks that help you explore the surrounding area.

The area abounds with all types of interesting plants, trees, wildlife, and especially birds. One customer spotted over 50 types of birds in one week.

Cormorant and Red Kite are frequently spotted whirling overhead at our marina, plus the rippling trill of the curlew – buzzards are almost mundane, using their favourite fence posts as look outs, and kingfisher, with their shimmering blue backs, are often spotted just ahead of your boat, poised ready to fish. The giant redwood tree in Llangattock has an amazing trunk girth, seeing is believing!

See the canal in pictures        See our boating tutorials