One of Europe’s oldest mountain ranges, the Cambrian Mountains of Wales, has launched its first ever visitor map.

In a land believed to have inspired JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth, the Cambrian Mountains offer, amongst other things, above and underground attractions, land, water and air-based activities and enough places to eat and drink to maintain the necessary calorie intake.

The map encourages ‘journeys to discovery’ across a mountain range once described as the ‘green desert of Wales’ and while there are no camels, what you will find is a necklace of ‘oasis-like’ communities that provide a real Cambrian Mountains welcome.

Each scenic mountain route is coloured gold on the map and will ensure that a visit to the beautiful and wild Cambrian Mountains landscape, including mountain peaks, woodland and waterfalls, rivers and lakes, becomes as precious as the visits to each individual ‘oasis’.

Not forgetting the night time too, as the Cambrian Mountains has a Dark Sky Park (one of only five in the UK) that provides amazing clear and light pollution-free star gazing opportunities.

The ‘golden’ routes on the map are a legacy of past travels across this mountainous landscape as farming, mining and droving communities undertook their journeys to make a living in this challenging terrain.

And at nearly 443,800,000 years old, this mountain landscape is now embarking on a new challenge of encouraging modern journeys of discovery across the region, providing a variety of high quality and highly memorable experiences for visitors from across Europe and the world.

“We’ve received an incredible amount of support for this, the first map of its kind,” said Dafydd Wyn Morgan, project manager for the Cambrian Mountains Initiative.

“So many tourism enterprises have signed up, and we’re thrilled with the very positive support from the towns and villages that surround the Cambrian Mountains”.

See this week’s south papers for the full story, available in shops and as a digital edition tomorrow