Nant-y-moch Reservoir & Pumlumon Foothills

If your ideal flying session involves seeing nobody at all, Nant-y-moch is the one. This big hydro reservoir sprawls through the bare, rolling Cambrian Mountains north-east of Aberystwyth, ringed by a narrow mountain road with pull-ins every few hundred metres and the whaleback of Pumlumon — the highest ground in mid Wales and source of both the Severn and the Wye — rising to the east. The landscape is stark rather than pretty: drowned valleys, islands of rough grass, dark peaty water and enormous skies, and it photographs like the Scottish flow country. Drone-wise it is about as unconstrained as Wales gets: no national park, no National Trust, no FRZ within a very long way, and open access land running down to the shoreline in most places. TOAL from any roadside pull-in on the moor. The dam at the southern end is Statkraft operational infrastructure feeding the Rheidol hydro scheme — photograph its elegant buttressed face from a respectful distance rather than hovering over the structure. Practical warnings: there is no phone signal for miles, no facilities, and the weather up here at 350m is a different climate from the coast — wind and horizontal drizzle arrive fast. Golden evening light across the water with Pumlumon behind is worth the drive on its own.