Things to do in Swansea

Aberaeron is one of the most complete and architecturally coherent planned towns in Wales, a small harbour settlement on the Ceredigion coast that was laid out in the early nineteenth century around a newly constructed harbour and developed with unusual discipline and consistency to create a townscape of considerable charm. The town was essentially the creation of the Reverend Alban Thomas Jones Gwynne, who inherited the estate in 1807 and used it to finance the construction of both the harbour and the grid of streets and squares that define Aberaeron's character today. The result is a Georgian planned town that survives in remarkably intact condition. The harbour is the heart of Aberaeron and gives the town its most distinctive visual quality. The inner harbour is enclosed by stone quays and surrounded on three sides by the colourfully painted Georgian and Victorian buildings that have become the defining image of the town. Small fishing vessels and leisure craft sit in the basin, and the combination of pastel-painted facades, the working harbour and the hills of Ceredigion rising behind creates a scene that is simultaneously quintessentially Welsh and reminiscent of the fishing towns of Cornwall or Brittany. The honey pot character of the setting has made Aberaeron one of the most visited small towns on Cardigan Bay. The streets behind the harbour reveal the planned town at its best, with consistent Georgian terraces and the town's squares maintaining the architectural discipline of the original development. The town has a good selection of independent shops, galleries, cafés and restaurants reflecting both its local economy and the significant tourism that the coastal setting and architectural quality attract. The Harbourmaster Hotel on the harbour front is among the most celebrated small hotels in Wales. The coastline either side of Aberaeron is typical of the Ceredigion coast, with low cliffs, rocky coves and the wide arc of Cardigan Bay stretching north toward the Llŷn Peninsula. The Wales Coast Path passes through the town and provides good coastal walking in both directions, while the landscape inland toward the Cambrian Mountains offers a very different experience of this beautiful and relatively uncrowded Welsh county.

Barafundle Bay in Pembrokeshire is frequently cited as one of the most beautiful beaches in Wales and among the finest in Britain, a small arc of golden sand enclosed by wooded headlands and limestone cliffs that can only be reached on foot, the absence of road access preserving its unspoiled character and keeping visitor numbers manageable even in high summer. The bay lies within the Stackpole Estate, owned by the National Trust, and is accessible by a fifteen-minute walk along the coastal path from the nearest car park at Stackpole Quay. The bay's enclosed setting gives it a sheltered and intimate quality quite different from the long, exposed Atlantic-facing beaches of the Pembrokeshire coast further west. The clear blue-green water of the Pembrokeshire coast, some of the cleanest sea water in Britain, fills the bay between its limestone headlands and provides excellent conditions for swimming, snorkelling and kayaking. The water clarity is a direct consequence of the low levels of pollution and river runoff in this part of the Pembrokeshire coast, and the underwater visibility in calm conditions can be exceptional by British standards. The walk to Barafundle from Stackpole Quay passes through a landscape of considerable natural and historical interest. The Stackpole Estate includes Bosherston Lakes, a complex of artificial lily ponds created in the late eighteenth century by damming three narrow limestone valleys, which are now one of the finest freshwater habitats in Wales and support large populations of water lilies, otters, kingfishers and wildfowl. The combination of lakes, woodland, limestone heath, sand dunes and coast makes the Stackpole Estate one of the richest and most varied ecological landscapes in Pembrokeshire. The Pembrokeshire Coast Path, the UK's only coastal national park path, passes directly above Barafundle Bay and provides the opportunity to extend a beach visit into a longer exploration of the limestone coast, with the Stackpole Head headland and the sea cave of the Green Bridge of Wales within easy walking distance.

The Bosherston Lily Ponds near Pembroke in Pembrokeshire are a series of artificial freshwater lakes created in the eighteenth century by the Stackpole Estate owners, who dammed three narrow limestone valleys to create the interconnected water bodies that now form one of the most beautiful and ecologically important freshwater habitats in Wales. The ponds are best known for the extraordinary display of white water lilies that covers the surface of the central and eastern arms from late May through July, a spectacle of natural beauty that attracts visitors from across Wales and beyond. The water lily display at its peak in June and early July is genuinely spectacular. The surface of the ponds can be almost entirely covered in the large, waxy white flowers of the European white water lily, their yellow centres reflected in the still, dark water between the lily pads and the whole scene framed by the limestone heath and dune vegetation of the Stackpole Estate. The combination of the lilies, the wildlife they support and the limestone coastal setting immediately adjacent to the sea at Barafundle Bay makes this one of the most varied and rewarding ecological landscapes in southwest Wales. The ponds support a remarkable diversity of wetland wildlife. Otters are regularly present and can be seen hunting in the channels between the lily beds, particularly in the early morning or evening. Kingfishers hunt the margins, great crested grebes breed on the open water sections, and the reedbeds on the edges support sedge and reed warbler. The limestone grassland and heath surrounding the ponds adds botanical interest, with orchids, cowslips and a range of calcicolous plants characteristic of the Pembrokeshire limestone. The footpath network through the Bosherston area connects the ponds with the cliff top at Barafundle Bay and Stackpole Head, allowing excellent circular walks that combine freshwater and coastal habitats in a single outing.

Caldey Island lies approximately three kilometres off the coast of Pembrokeshire near the resort town of Tenby and is home to a small community of Cistercian monks who maintain a working monastery on the island that has been a place of religious life since at least the sixth century. The island is accessible by boat from Tenby harbour during the summer season and provides visitors with an experience of unusual peace and simplicity: a working monastic community, an island farm, a lighthouse, sandy beaches and the quiet of an island from which the sound and complexity of the mainland world is absent. The monastery was founded in its current form in 1929 when a community of Belgian Reformed Cistercian monks took over the island, restoring the earlier monastic buildings and establishing the agricultural and commercial operations that sustain the community today. The monks produce a range of products including perfumes made from the island's wild flowers, chocolate and shortbread that are sold in the island shop and provide significant income. The monastery church is open to visitors during the hours when the monks are not engaged in the Divine Office, and the atmosphere of the working religious community gives the island an authenticity quite different from a purely heritage or tourist attraction. The island's earlier religious history extends back to the Celtic Christian period when St Illtud and subsequently St Samson established monastic communities here, and the ruins of the medieval priory church bear witness to centuries of religious occupation before the Protestant Reformation ended monastic life in Britain. The remains of the old priory are the most visible evidence of this earlier history and can be explored on foot. The beaches on the southern side of the island, sheltered from the prevailing winds and blessed with the unusually clear water of this section of the Pembrokeshire coast, provide excellent bathing and a tranquil contrast to the religious and heritage dimensions of the island.

Cenarth Falls on the River Teifi in west Wales, where the river descends through a dramatic series of cascades and rapids between the Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion borders, has been a tourist attraction since the eighteenth century when the Welsh Romantic movement identified this combination of rushing water, natural rock formation and riverside woodland as one of the finest picturesque landscapes in Wales. The falls are most dramatic in winter and spring when the volume of water in the Teifi is at its greatest, but the setting retains considerable appeal throughout the year. The Teifi at Cenarth is one of the most important coracle rivers in Wales, the ancient tradition of one-person round fishing boats made from woven willow and hide having been maintained on this river since at least the medieval period. The National Coracle Centre in the mill beside the falls houses a remarkable collection of coracles from rivers across Wales and from equivalent traditions worldwide, providing an unexpected cultural and ethnographic dimension to a visit principally motivated by the waterfalls. The seventeenth-century bridge across the gorge provides an excellent viewpoint for the lower section of the falls and the riverside path below gives access to the falls themselves. The village of Cenarth above the falls provides visitor facilities and the surrounding Teifi Valley landscape, with its market towns of Newcastle Emlyn and Cardigan, provides excellent context for a visit to this section of west Wales.

Clydach Lakes is a recreational area in the Swansea valley near Clydach in Swansea, providing fishing, walking and outdoor recreation facilities for communities in the lower Swansea valley and surrounding area. The lakes are former industrial water features associated with the copper and metal smelting industries that dominated the lower Swansea valley from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, a landscape of extraordinary industrial heritage that has been progressively reclaimed and restored since the closure of the major smelting works. The lower Swansea valley industrial heritage, once described as one of the most heavily polluted industrial landscapes in Britain, has been transformed over several decades into a combination of nature reserves, parks, retail development and residential areas. The Clydach area itself retains evidence of its industrial heritage in the Clydach Ironworks ruins within the dramatic Clydach Gorge to the north.

Culver Hole is a remarkable and mysterious stone-walled structure built into a sea cave in the limestone cliffs on the Gower Peninsula near Port Eynon in Swansea, one of the most unusual built structures in Wales. The building fills a vertical cleft in the cliff from beach level to a height of approximately 18 metres, with several floors of pigeon holes visible in the stone walls suggesting that the structure functioned as a large medieval dovecote. However, the purpose and date of the structure remain uncertain, with various theories suggesting uses as a fortified hiding place, a smugglers' store, a fishermen's refuge or a combination of purposes. The site is accessible on foot from Port Eynon beach along the coastal path. The Gower Peninsula coastal path in this area provides some of the finest cliff and beach walking in south Wales, with limestone headlands, sandy bays and views toward the Bristol Channel.

Dan-yr-Ogof in the Swansea Valley of the Brecon Beacons National Park is the largest and most complex showcave system in Britain, a labyrinth of passages and caverns discovered in 1912 and progressively explored over the following century that extends for approximately seventeen kilometres of surveyed passages beneath the limestone country of the upper Swansea Valley. The showcave complex open to visitors includes three separate cave experiences of considerable variety, from the spectacular stalagmite formations of the Cathedral Cave to the archaeological Cathedral Cave with its Iron Age and Bronze Age deposits. The Cathedral Cave takes its name from the enormous cavern at its heart, a chamber of approximately 40 metres height filled with the largest single collection of stalagmite and stalactite formations of any showcave in Britain, assembled over hundreds of thousands of years by the dripping water that has carved and decorated the cave since the limestone was first penetrated by surface water. The scale of the individual formations, some of considerable height and girth, creates an atmosphere of geological majesty that justifies the cave's name. The Bone Cave, the third showcave in the complex, contains the archaeological evidence of the human occupation of the cave system from the Bronze Age to the Roman period, including human skeletal remains of at least forty-two individuals deposited in the cave over a period of several thousand years. The Dan-yr-Ogof complex also includes an extensive dinosaur park in the surface grounds that provides entertainment for younger visitors while the archaeological and geological interest of the caves appeals to adults.

The Gower Peninsula in South Wales holds a remarkable place in British heritage: in 1956 it became the first place in the United Kingdom to be officially designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. That honour was well deserved. The peninsula juts westward from the city of Swansea into the Bristol Channel, offering a concentrated landscape of clifftop drama, sweeping sandy beaches, ancient woodland and quiet farming countryside all within an easily explored area. The southern coastline is where Gower truly earns its reputation. Rhossili Bay, at the westernmost tip of the peninsula, is consistently voted one of the finest beaches in Britain and in Europe. Its three-mile curve of golden sand backed by the whale-backed ridge of Rhossili Down creates a scene of genuine grandeur. At low tide the bones of the prehistoric forest that once stretched across the bay occasionally appear in the sand, and the ruined medieval village of Rhossili can be spotted near the cliffside, a reminder of how dramatically the sea has reshaped this coastline. The dramatic headland of Worm's Head extends beyond Rhossili at low tide and can be reached across a rocky causeway, though careful timing is essential. Oxwich Bay, Three Cliffs Bay and Caswell Bay each offer their own distinct character, from nature reserve wetlands to sandy family beaches sheltered by limestone headlands. The coastline's geological character is dominated by Carboniferous limestone, which produces the arching cave systems, blowholes and distinctive grey-white cliffs that define so much of the southern Gower shore. Inland, the Gower landscape is equally rich in history and wildlife. Ancient burial chambers such as Arthur's Stone, a Neolithic capstone monument on the slopes of Cefn Bryn, demonstrate human settlement stretching back five millennia. Pennard Castle, now a romantic ruin perched above Three Cliffs Bay, adds a medieval dimension to the landscape. The hedgerow-lined lanes crossing the peninsula connect small villages that have changed little in character over generations. Wildlife thrives across the Gower. The coastline supports colonies of seabirds on the limestone stacks and rocky shores, while the dunes at Oxwich and Whiteford Burrows harbour rare orchids and plant communities. Choughs, once lost from this coast, have returned in small numbers, and grey seals regularly haul out on the quieter beaches. For visitors based in Swansea, the Gower is an easy half-day escape that can fill several days of exploration. Walking, cycling, surfing, kayaking and horse riding are all popular activities, and the network of coastal and inland paths allows routes to suit all levels. A car is useful given the distances involved, though some beaches and coastal paths are reachable by local bus during the summer months.

Thou shalt not cross It’s easy to see why Loughor was built here. The ruins are those of a castle that commanded what was once a low-tide fording point across the Loughor Estuary. It wasn’t just the Normans who appreciated its strategic value. One thousand years earlier the Romans constructed the fort of Leucarum on this site. A 12th-century earthworks castle, burnt by the Welsh in 1151, was replaced in the next century with a stone fortress, a single tower of which survives along with the foundations of curtain walls.

Marloes Sands in the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park is one of the finest beaches in Wales and one of the most geologically interesting on the entire Pembrokeshire coast, a broad west-facing strand of firm sand accessible by a twenty-minute walk from the National Trust car park at Marloes village. The combination of the beach quality, the spectacular folded rock strata in the cliffs and the views across St Brides Bay creates one of the most rewarding beach visits on the Welsh coast. The cliffs expose the Old Red Sandstone and Silurian rocks of southwest Pembrokeshire in a series of folds and faults of considerable visual drama. The Three Chimneys, three distinctive vertical rock ribs projecting from the cliff face, provide the most dramatic geological feature and the defining image of the beach. Boat trips from Martins Haven to Skomer Island provide one of the finest wildlife island experiences in Wales, the grey seal colony and seabird populations of the island complementing the beach visit perfectly and making Marloes an excellent base for a full day of Pembrokeshire coastal activity.

Mumbles Pier is a Victorian pleasure pier at Mumbles on the western edge of Swansea Bay in south Wales, one of the few surviving traditional seaside piers in Wales and a beloved landmark of the Gower coast. The pier was opened in 1898 and served as the terminus of the world's first passenger railway service, the Swansea and Mumbles Railway which ran along the bay from 1807 to 1960. Extensively restored and redeveloped in recent years, the pier now houses an RNLI lifeboat station, an amusement area and various food and retail outlets, maintaining its traditional seaside character while providing modern visitor facilities. The pier provides excellent views over Swansea Bay, the limestone headland of Mumbles Head and the outlying lighthouse island. Mumbles village is one of the most attractive communities on the Gower coast, known for its restaurants, independent shops and the beginning of the Gower Peninsula coastal path.

Mwnt is a small and exceptionally beautiful bay on the Ceredigion Heritage Coast of Wales, a secluded cove beneath a grassy promontory that combines a sweeping arc of golden sand, clear turquoise water and the dramatic headland of the Foel Mwnt, a conical hill rising steeply from the coast to provide views along the entire Cardigan Bay coastline toward the mountains of Snowdonia to the north and the Pembrokeshire coast to the south. The National Trust manages this section of the coast and the combination of the beach, the headland walking and the tiny medieval church of the Holy Cross at the clifftop makes Mwnt one of the most rewarding short visits on the Welsh coast. The Church of the Holy Cross at Mwnt is one of the oldest Christian sites in Wales, a small whitewashed building of great simplicity that dates in its current form from the fourteenth century but stands on a site of much earlier religious use. The church's remote clifftop position, its whitewashed walls visible from a considerable distance at sea, made it a landmark for vessels passing through Cardigan Bay in the medieval period, and the tradition of religious use on this headland may extend back to the early Christian period of the sixth and seventh centuries. The bay has an outstanding reputation for dolphin watching. A resident population of bottlenose dolphins, one of the only resident populations on the Welsh coast, uses the waters of Cardigan Bay throughout the year and individuals and small groups are frequently visible from the headland and beach, particularly in the calmer conditions of summer and early autumn. The boat trips from New Quay along the coast provide closer encounters with the dolphins, but the view from the Foel Mwnt headland of dolphins in the clear water below is one of the most memorable wildlife experiences available in Wales. The beach itself, enclosed between the headland and the lower ground to the south, provides sheltered swimming in water of remarkable clarity, and the grassy slopes of the Foel Mwnt provide excellent picnicking ground above.

Nevern is a small village in the Preseli Hills area of north Pembrokeshire whose ancient church of St Brynach and its remarkable collection of early medieval carved stones make it one of the most significant early Christian sites in Wales and one of the most atmospheric churchyards in Britain. The combination of the Norman church building, the extraordinary collection of Celtic and Viking-age carved crosses, the ancient yew avenue leading to the church door and the legends attached to the site creates an experience of concentrated historical and spiritual weight quite unlike any other in west Wales. The churchyard at Nevern is approached through an avenue of ancient yew trees of such age, girth and character that the walk between them toward the church door is one of the most dramatically atmospheric approaches to any church in Britain. One of the yews is known as the Bleeding Yew for the red sap that drips perpetually from a wound in its trunk, a phenomenon that has generated numerous legends and that continues to impress and unsettle visitors centuries after it was first noted. The origin of the crimson flow is debated, various plant pathologies and environmental factors having been proposed without conclusive result. The great cross of Nevern, a carved cross of the tenth or eleventh century standing over four metres high in the churchyard, is one of the finest early medieval Celtic crosses in Wales and is carved with interlaced knotwork and other decorative patterns of considerable sophistication. Further carved stones within the church, including the Maglocunus stone with its Latin and Ogham inscriptions of the fifth or sixth century, make the church interior a remarkable museum of the earliest centuries of Welsh Christianity. The Preseli Hills above Nevern, from which the bluestones of Stonehenge were quarried, provide excellent walking and the Iron Age hillfort of Carn Ingli is accessible from the village.

New Quay is a small and charming harbour town on the Ceredigion coast of Wales, a curved bay of colourful terraced houses climbing above a working fishing harbour whose combination of architectural appeal, clear water, dolphin watching and literary association makes it one of the most attractive and most rewarding small coastal towns in Wales. The town claims a connection with Dylan Thomas, who lived in New Quay for a period in 1944 and 1945 and is widely believed to have based the fictional Llareggub of Under Milk Wood on the town and its characters, although Laugharne in Carmarthenshire makes a competing claim. The harbour is the heart of New Quay, its stone quay protecting a small fleet of fishing vessels and pleasure craft and the seafront restaurants and cafés providing the best local crab and lobster directly from the boats that catch them. The water in the bay is exceptionally clear and the sandy beach below the harbour provides sheltered swimming in conditions that attract families in considerable numbers during the summer months. New Quay's most celebrated wildlife asset is the bottlenose dolphin population of Cardigan Bay. A resident population of approximately 250 dolphins, the only genetically distinct coastal bottlenose population in Britain, uses the waters offshore throughout the year, and New Quay has become the principal base for dolphin watching tours in Wales. The Sea Watch Foundation has maintained a marine wildlife centre in the town for many years, and the combination of the bay's geography, the shallow inshore waters and the reliable dolphin presence makes New Quay the best location in Wales for observing these animals. The Welsh Wildlife Centre at Cilgerran, the red kite feeding station at Aberaeron and the coastal walking of the Ceredigion Heritage Coast all extend the range of natural and cultural experiences accessible from New Quay.