Wye Valley Wye Valley The Wye Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB; ) is an internationally important protected landscape straddling the border between England and Wales. It is one of the most dramatic and scenic landscapes in Britain. The River Wye () is the fifth-longest river in the United Kingdom. The upper part passes through Rhayader, Builth Wells and Hay-on-Wye, but the area designated as an AONB covers surrounding a stretch lower down the river, from just south of Hereford to Chepstow. This area covers parts of the counties of Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Monmouthshire, and is recognised in particular for its
England–Wales border its residents at the time spoke Welsh. In the late 17th century under Charles II it was added to the Oxford circuit of the English Assizes, following which, according to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, it gradually "came to be regarded as an English county". Under that interpretation, the boundary between England and Wales passed down the Rhymney valley, along Monmouthshire's western borders with Brecknockshire and Glamorgan, so including Newport, and other industrialised parts of what would now generally be considered to be South Wales, within England. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica unambiguously described the county as part of England, but noted