The Rough Guide to Wales (Travel Guide eBook)

Rough Guides

• Publisher: Rough Guides
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781789197327
• Edition: 10
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Travel

The Rough Guide to Wales Make the most of your time on Earth with the ultimate travel guides. Discover Wales with this comprehensive and entertaining travel guide, packed with practical information and honest recommendations by our independent experts. Whether you plan to hike through the wilds of Snowdonia, follow in Wordsworth's footsteps at Tintern Abbey or explore Welsh music and theatre in Swansea, The Rough Guide to Wales will show you the ideal places to sleep, eat, drink and shop along the way. Features of this travel guide to Wales:
- Detailed regional coverage: provides practical information for every kind of trip, from off-the-beaten-track adventures to chilled-out breaks in popular tourist areas
- Honest and independent reviews: written with Rough Guides' trademark blend of humour, honesty and expertise, our writers will help you make the most from your trip to Wales
- Meticulous mapping: practical full-colour maps, with clearly numbered, colour-coded keys. Find your way around the arcades of central Cardiff or the peaks of Brecon Beacons National Park without needing to get online
- Fabulous full-colour photography: features inspirational colour photography
- Time-saving itineraries: carefully planned routes will help inspire and inform your on-the-road experiences
- Things not to miss: Rough Guides' rundown of the best sights and top experiences
- Travel tips and info: packed with essential pre-departure information including getting around, accommodation, food and drink, health, the media, festivals, sports and outdoor activities, culture and etiquette, shopping and more
- Background information: comprehensive 'Contexts' chapter provides fascinating insights into Wales with coverage of history, religion, ethnic groups, environment, wildlife and books, plus a handy language section and glossary- Covers: Cardiff, Swansea and the southeast; the southwest; the Brecon Beacons and Powys; the Cambrian coast; the Dee Valley; Snowdonia and the Llyn; the north coast and Anglesey. Attractions include: Cardiff Bay; St David's Cathedral; Pembrokeshire National Park; Conwy Castle; Cadair Idris; Ffestiniog Railway; Hay Festival; the beaches of the Llyn and Gower peninsulas.You may also be interested in: Rough Guide to the North Coast 500 About Rough Guides: Rough Guides have been inspiring travellers for over 35 years, with over 30 million copies sold globally. Synonymous with practical travel tips, quality writing and a trustworthy 'tell it like it is' ethos, the Rough Guides list includes more than 260 travel guides to 120+ destinations, gift-books and phrasebooks.

Cardiff and southeast Wales

Highlights

Highlights are marked on the map on page 73

1 Cardiff Dazzling architecture, a city-centre castle and cracking nightlife mark the Welsh capital out as a must-visit destination. See page 73

2 Tintern Abbey Get your poetic juices flowing at Tintern’s towering ruins, romantically situated in the Wye Valley. See page 90

3 Transporter Bridge, Newport Check out this remarkable feat of engineering by climbing up to the walkway – you’ll need a head for heights. See page 96

4 Caerleon Contemplate whether Wales’ best-preserved Roman remains were indeed the site of King Arthur’s fabled court, Camelot. See page 98

5 Blaenavon Strap on a hardhat and headlamp and follow ex-coal miners into the Big Pit – one of the country’s most poignant and powerful museums. See page 105

6 Mining memorials From the colossal Six Bells monument in Abertillery to the Aber Valley Heritage Museum, the Valleys are littered with moving memorials commemorating the many disasters that have befallen the old mining communities. See pages 107 and 109

7 Rhossili beach Surf some of Britain’s best waves, where the Gower peninsula ends in a flourish. See page 122

Fun on the beach and cliffs of Rhossili Bay

Shutterstock

Cardiff and southeast Wales

Home to some sixty percent of the country’s population, the southeastern corner of Wales is one of Britain’s most industrialized regions. People and industry are most heavily concentrated around the sea ports and former mining valleys, though quiet hills and beaches are only ever a few miles away. Once the world’s busiest coal port, Cardiff is today the country’s commercial, cultural and political powerhouse, an upbeat capital offering stellar museums, a storybook castle and invigorating nightlife. Beyond Cardiff, Wales unfolds from the English border in a beguilingly rural manner.

The Guardian statue overlooking Parc Arael Griffin in Abertillery

Alamy

The River Wye flows forth from its mouth at the fortress town of Chepstow, where you’ll find one of the most impressive castles in a land where few towns are without one. In the Wye’s beautiful valley lie the spectacularly placed ruins of Tintern Abbey, downstream from the old county town of Monmouth. Industrialization intensifies as you travel west to the River Usk, which spills out into the Bristol Channel at Newport, Wales’ third-largest conurbation, and home to the remains of an extensive Roman settlement in adjacent Caerleon.

To the west and north are the world-famous Valleys, once the coal- and iron-rich powerhouse of the British Empire. This is the Wales of popular imagination: hemmed-in valley floors packed with seemingly never-ending lines of slate-roofed terraced houses, slanted towards the pithead. Although all the deep mines have closed, the area is still one of tight-knit towns, with a rich working-class heritage displayed in some gutsy museums and colliery tours, such as the Big Pit at Blaenavon and the Rhondda Heritage Park in Trehafod.

Immediately west of Cardiff, and a world away from the industrial hangover of the Valleys, is the lush Vale of Glamorgan and Glamorgan Heritage Coast, which stretches westwards to include the neighbouring county of Bridgend. The entire area is dotted with stoic little market towns and chirpy seaside resorts – notably Barry in the east and Porthcawl in the west.

West again is Wales’ second city, Swansea. Bright, breezy and brash, Swansea is renowned for its nightlife and is undergoing rapid development, particularly along its historic waterfront. Like Cardiff, the city grew principally on the strength of its now revitalized docks, from where the coast arcs round from the Port Talbot steelworks in the east to the elegant holiday town of Mumbles on the jaw of the magnificent Gower peninsula in the west. Gower was Britain’s first-ever designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and remains a microcosm of rural Wales, with its grand beaches, rocky headlands, ruined castles and bracken heaths roamed by wild horses.

GETTING AROUND Southeast Wales

By car Southeast Wales is by far the easiest part of the country to travel around. Swift dual carriageways connect with the M4, bringing all corners of the region into close proximity.

By bus and train This is the only region of Wales with a half-decent train service, and most suburban and rural services interconnect with Cardiff, Newport or Swansea. Bus services fill in virtually all of the gaps, though often rather slowly, while Sunday services are often dramatically reduced.

Cardiff and around

Official capital of Wales only since 1955, the buoyant city of CARDIFF (Caerdydd) has, since the turn of the millennium, witnessed a remarkable evolution from a large town to a truly international city, with massive developments in the centre as well as on the rejuvenated waterfront. With a reputation as a party town, allied to lots of top-class sport and a cultural attractions, it is one of the UK’s most enticing destinations.

The sights are clustered around fairly small distinct districts. Easily navigable on foot, the commercial centre is bounded by the River Taff on the western side. The Taff flows past the high stone walls of Cardiff’s castle and the Principality Stadium, the city’s two defining landmarks. Near the southeastern tip of the castle walls is Cardiff’s main crossroads, where the great Edwardian shopping boulevards, Queen Street and High Street, conceal a world of arcades, great stores and run-of-the-mill malls. North of the castle, a series of white Edwardian buildings is home to the National Museum and Gallery, City Hall and Cardiff University.

Northwest of the centre, the well-heeled suburb of Pontcanna is home to the city’s best restaurants; beyond is the village-like suburb of Llandaff, built around the city’s patchwork cathedral. A mile south of the commercial centre lies Cardiff Bay, revitalized since the construction of a barrage to form a vast freshwater lake. Home to the National Assembly and Wales Millennium Centre, among many other attractions, it’s a bona fide destination in its own right.

Brief history

Cardiff’s origins date back to Roman times, when tribes from Isca settled here, building a small village alongside the Roman military fort. The fort was largely uninhabited from the Romans’ departure until the Norman invasion, when William the Conqueror offered Welsh land to his knights if they could subdue the local tribes. In 1093, Robert FitzHamon built a simple fort on a moated hillock that still stands today in the grounds of the castle. A town grew up in the lee of the fortress, developing into a small fishing and farming community that remained a quiet backwater until the end of the eighteenth century.

Industrial expansion

The Bute family, lords of the manor of Cardiff, instigated new developments on their land, starting with the construction of a canal from Merthyr Tydfil (then Wales’ largest town) to Cardiff in 1794. The second Marquess of Bute built the first dock in 1839, opening others in swift succession. The Butes, who owned massive swathes of the rapidly industrializing south Wales valleys, insisted that all coal and iron exports use the family docks in Cardiff, and it subsequently became one of the busiest ports in the world. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Cardiff’s population had soared to 170,000 from its 1801 figure of around one thousand, and the ambitious new Civic Centre in Cathays Park was well under way.

Changing fortunes

The twentieth century saw the city’s fortunes rise, plummet and rise a...

Table of contents

• Introduction to Wales
• Basics
• Cardiff and southeast Wales
• Southwest Wales
• The Brecon Beacons and Powys
• The Cambrian coast
• The Dee Valley and around
• Snowdonia and the Llŷn
• The north coast and Anglesey
• Contexts
• Small print