The waterfall walks on Natural Resources Wales land, what parking costs, and the two that are shut

Natural Resources Wales lists 116 places to visit, and the waterfalls are scattered through that list with no index of its own. NRW publishes no index of which of its sites has a waterfall and no height for any waterfall, so this guide names the falls NRW's own place pages describe rather than claiming a total. What NRW does publish, on every page, is a parking badge, and Cover counted those across all 116 on 3 September 2026: 84 are free to park at, 22 carry a charge, and ten show no parking badge at all. Three of the 22 have both a free car park and a charged one. Two waterfall trails were closed that day.

The two that are shut

At Ceunant Llennyrch near Porthmadog, NRW's notice reads: "The Rhaeadr Ddu Waterfall Walk is closed due to a dangerous bridge." At Cwm Rhaeadr Forest above Llandovery it reads: "The Waterfall Trail is closed." Both were live when Cover re-read the two pages at 04:50 on 3 September 2026. Cwm Rhaeadr carries a third notice worth reading before loading a bike: most of the mountain bike trail remains closed by storm damage, though NRW says the final section of singletrack descent has reopened. A fourth, on the Gwaun Hepste and Dinas Rock pages, says tree harvesting and path improvements are underway in Waterfall Country.

What NRW says about the water

The warning NRW prints on its Waterfall Country pages is the most important thing on those pages. "Serious accidents do happen to visitors here and there have been several fatalities in recent years," it reads, and: "You are at risk of life-changing injuries or death if you decide to enter the water." NRW tells visitors not to jump into a pool or wade in for a swim, because the water is cold, deep and fast flowing with slippery rocks, strong currents and hidden hazards, and never to try gorge walking, canyoning or scrambling without training or a registered and licensed operator. At Coedydd Aber the line is shorter: "There are unprotected drops at the waterfalls."

Waterfall Country, and the one fall NRW names

Gwaun Hepste near Merthyr Tydfil is the trailhead for the Four Falls Trail, graded Strenuous at 5 miles and 3 to 4 hours. The main path is wide and stone surfaced; the link paths down to each viewpoint are narrow, unsurfaced and slippery. NRW calls it a walk to "four of the area's most spectacular waterfalls" and names only one of the four anywhere, Sgwd yr Eira, on its Dinas Rock page, which translates it as "fall of snow". Cover prints no name for the other three, because NRW's pages carry none. Parking at Gwaun Hepste is run by the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park Authority at £6 a car, card only. Dinas Rock near Neath is the other way in and parks for nothing, and from it the Sychryd Trail runs 0.4 miles, graded Accessible, to the Sychryd cascades.

The north west

Coedydd Aber near Bangor is the gentlest. The Aber Falls Walk is Easy, 2.3 miles there and back on a compacted path 1.5 metres wide, ending at Rhaeadr Fawr, known by some locally as Aber Falls. Parking costs £5, free for Blue Badge holders, and when the small car parks fill NRW points visitors to the free one at Abergwyngregyn, a mile out along a road with no pavement in places. Swallow Falls is reached from Gwydir Forest Park's free Ty'n Llwyn car park on a Strenuous 2.2 miles, with paths under 70cm wide in places, to what NRW calls a viewpoint over the waterfall. Tyddyn Gwladys in Coed y Brenin is the outlier: its Waterfalls and Goldmines Trail is Moderate, 2.2 miles, free and suitable for pushchairs and mobility scooters, reaching Rhaeadr Mawddach and the fall NRW's English page calls Pistyll Gain and its own Welsh page calls Pistyll Cain. Rhaeadr Cynfal at Ceunant Cynfal is a Strenuous, unwaymarked 1.4 miles to a Victorian viewing platform, with no car park at the reserve.

Mid Wales, the north east and the south

Water-Break-its-Neck at Warren Wood in Radnor Forest is the easiest walk to a named fall here: Easy, 0.6 miles there and back, mainly level and free to park, though NRW warns it "can become a trickle after a long dry spell". Hafren Forest near Llanidloes holds Severn-Break-its-Neck, a Moderate 1.4 miles from the free Rhyd-y-benwch car park, and its Cascades Walk is an Accessible boardwalk to a viewing platform. Coed Maen Arthur has no car park and a Moderate 3-mile trail, and NRW warns the river there can rise very quickly after heavy rain, and to keep away. Blaen y Glyn in Talybont Forest has two free car parks and two unwaymarked walks to the same fall. Cwm Rhaeadr holds what NRW calls "the highest waterfall in Carmarthenshire", with no number attached.

What it costs to park

Only nine of the 22 charging sites print a price on NRW's own page, and those nine are the table below. The other 13 confirm a charge and leave the figure to whoever runs the car park, including Eryri National Park Authority at Cadair Idris, Gwynedd Council at Morfa Harlech and the Penrice Estate at Oxwich, where NRW says the charge varies by season. Blue Badge holders park free at Coed y Brenin, as do registered residents of four nearby towns. A season ticket costs £40 a year for one vehicle at Coed y Brenin and Bwlch Nant yr Arian together, or £70 to add Llanddwyn Beach at Newborough.

The grades, and what an Accessible trail reaches

NRW sorts its walking trails into four grades. Accessible is "Walks for everyone, including people with wheelchairs and pushchairs, using accessible paths." Easy covers generally level trails that may have rough or irregular surfacing. Moderate asks for "a reasonably good level of fitness". Strenuous is "for experienced walkers with a good fitness level", may include very steep hills and rough country, and makes boots and waterproofs essential. Nine of the trails named in this guide carry the Strenuous grade, and two of those nine are the closed ones. On Cover's own reading of NRW's grades, no Accessible trail named here reaches a named waterfall at close range: the Sychryd Trail stops at the cascades and Hafren's Cascades Walk at a viewing platform. The nearest exception is in Coed y Brenin, where the Forest Garden's Accessible trail, 0.2 miles and 2 metres wide with no steps or stiles, reaches a viewpoint overlooking a waterfall.

This guide stands on NRW's own place pages, its trail grades page and its visiting safely page, all read on 3 September 2026 and linked below. The parking split was counted by Cover across all 116 place pages from the badge NRW prints on each. No visit was made and no colour is printed that NRW did not write. No height appears for any waterfall because NRW publishes none, including for the fall it calls the highest in Carmarthenshire. NRW says there is no mobile reception in the gorges at Ceunant Llennyrch and Ceunant Cynfal. Prices and closures are a snapshot of that date: NRW closes trails at short notice, so read the site's own page before setting off.