This golden spot on the Welsh side of the border with England has been called the birthplace of British tourism. Staying at Gliffaes, an ultra-comfy country house hotel in the Usk Valley, I persuade the owner, James Suter, to take me on to the leads of the roof. He points to the Brecon Beacons on one side, Table Mountain on the other; brawling below us is the river Usk. “Fishermen love it here,” he says. There are so many old or unusual trees in this part of Wales that the hotel publishes a guide to them. The artist and cleric Rev William Gilpin once lauded the qualities of the river Wye, whose loops bring it within a few miles of the Usk and travellers who were prevented from making the Grand Tour on the Continent by the Napoleonic Wars found that it had as much scenery to offer as Italy.