My guide, Kevin Walker, suddenly becomes animated: “Here it is: the Ent!” We’re standing by the Brecon and Monmouthshire Canal and in front of us is something quite unexpected — a giant American redwood with, it has to be said, a very Ent-like “nose” (the Ents, for those not in the know, are characters out of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy world named Middle-earth).
I’m at the halfway point of an excellent Tolkien-themed walk around the historic town of Crickhowell, thought to have been the inspiration for Crickhollow, the hobbit village. As we stroll along the towpath, Walker tells me that the tree was planted several hundred years ago. “It always surprises people,” he laughs.
We scramble up the bank onto a stone bridge. From here the