Rhayader 4.78

Rhayader is a market town and community in Powys, Wales. It has a population of 2,088, and is the first town on the banks of the River Wye, 20mi from its source on the Plynlimon range of the Cambrian Mountains.Although being situated in the mostly Anglicised border county of Radnorshire, 55% of the community have some form of Welsh identity according to the 2011 census.The town is one of the principal centres of population in the historic county of Radnorshire.It is situated roughly midway between North and south Wales on the A470, 13 miles north of Builth Wells and 30 miles east of Aberystwyth on the A44 - two of Wales' most important trunk roads. The B4574 mountain road to Aberystwyth is described by the AA as one of the ten most scenic drives in the world.EtymologyThe name "Rhayader" is a partly-Anglicised form of its Welsh name "Y Rhaeadr", or more fully, "Rhaeadr Gwy" . Strictly speaking, according to place-name spelling conventions in Welsh, the name of the town would be 'Rhaeadr-gwy', and the waterfall itself 'Rhaeadr Gwy', but it seems that this distinction is usually ignored. In the Welsh of the area the name is, as one would expect on the pattern of similar words, Rheiad. Little remains of the waterfall itself, it having been destroyed in 1780 to make way for the bridge linking the town to Cwmdauddwr and the Elan Valley - the Lakeland of Wales.