While the honeypot waterfalls draw the crowds, Melincourt Falls — Sgwd Rhyd yr Hesg in Welsh — stays gloriously quiet. A single near-vertical curtain drops 24 metres over a hard band of sandstone, a mile south of Resolven in the Vale of Neath.
The falls sit in a small, atmospheric nature reserve of ancient sessile oak, reached by a short, near-level woodland walk along the brook — often muddy, always lovely. It’s the kind of place you can have almost to yourselves even when the big-name falls are packed.
It has drawn visitors for two centuries: J.M.W. Turner sketched here on his South Wales tour of the mid-1790s, and his watercolour of the falls now hangs in the Tate.
Worth knowing
- The 24-metre (80ft) fall drops over a resistant band of Lower Pennant sandstone — a classic hard-cap waterfall.
- Turner painted the falls on his 1795 South Wales sketching tour; “The Waterfall at Melincourt, Vale of Neath” is held by the Tate.
- It lies within a 13-acre nature reserve managed by the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales, rich in ferns, mosses and woodland birds.
- A local “Turner Trail” links Melincourt with other spots the painter sketched around the Vale of Neath.