Is This One of The Best Driving Roads in Wales? Top Gear's Forgotten Gem? From Newbridge to Beulah

You start in Newbridge-on-Wye, a quiet village on the River Wye where the A470 runs north-south. Head west on the B4358, and almost immediately the road narrows and dives into the fun stuff: a series of undulating hills, sharp crests where the car gets light if you're pushing on, and tight corners that demand proper commitment.
It's the kind of road that feels purpose-built for enthusiastic driving—stunningly twisty, with blind summits and cambers that reward a well-placed throttle foot. The scenery is pure Welsh heartland: open fields dotted with sheep, patches of woodland, distant hills, and barely any traffic to interrupt the flow. A YouTube dashcam run describes it as "stunning twisty and undulating," noting how the camera flattens the dramatic climbs and dips, but in reality, it's a proper roller coaster.


In the spirit of Top Gear, this section often appears in fan-compiled "Top Gear favourite routes" through mid-Wales, particularly loops starting from the Elan Valley dams (a Clarkson-era staple for its epic reservoirs and empty roads). Routes head south via Rhayader to Newbridge-on-Wye, then along this very B4358 to Beulah before continuing to Llanwrtyd Wells or the military ranges on the Epynt. It's not the famous Black Mountain Pass (the A4069 that Jeremy Clarkson raved about), but it's part of those extended Welsh blasts that Top Gear loved for combining technical driving with jaw-dropping isolation—no straights for power slides, just pure handling and rhythm over the hills.
Imagine Hammond in a lightweight hot hatch complaining about the bumps while secretly loving the challenge, May praising the Victorian engineering of the nearby valleys, and Clarkson declaring it "proper driving" with sheep as the only marshals. It's empty enough for a cheeky overtake (safely, of course), grippy in the dry, and utterly absorbing—exactly the sort of under-the-radar gem that makes Welsh roads some of the best in the UK