Bridge Inn Camping Site

There's a small back road from the Welsh village of Pandy that skirts around the bottom of the Black Mountains, and so unwittingly finds itself in England for a stretch. Just before it heads back for the border at Hay-on-Wye, it slides into Michaelchurch Escley, a sinuous village named after both its church and its brook. At one of the few turnings-off sits the deftliest of hidden pubs, the Bridge Inn.

The demarcation here is clear: campervans and caravans are corralled by the riverside, while a grassy terrace plays host to the two-man tents. The top terrace – a sunny circle bounded by trees – accommodates the family-sized dwellings. In summer, children play in the stream by the inn's eponymous bridge, while their parents sit out in the beer garden pretending to keep an eye on them. The pub, a low-beamed inn of indeterminate age, was once a place where drovers slaked their thirst before taking their herds or flocks across the river.

Today it still serves locally brewed real ales, and meals that use locally sourced produce. A large folder in the pub bulges with scores of local walks – if you did one a day you'd be here all summer – urging hikers up to Hergest Ridge, the Devil's Pulpit, Arthur's Stone and beyond. The cycling is pretty good here too, with plenty of very minor roads wending their way from somnolent village to somnolent village, before surprising the patient pedaller with huge open vistas of Herefordshire hills.

This quaint riverside inn is at the foot of the Black Mountains on the edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park.