Beach in Ceredigion

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.

Borth Beach is a long, straight sandy shore on Cardigan Bay in Ceredigion, backed by the extensive sand dunes of Ynyslas to the north and the village of Borth itself to the south, a stretch of coastline with an unusually wild and atmospheric character that distinguishes it from the more manicured resort beaches of the Welsh coast. The beach faces west across Cardigan Bay toward the open sea, and the combination of Atlantic exposure, low surf and the wide, flat sands provides a classic beach experience in a landscape that retains considerable natural character. Borth is notable for a remarkable natural phenomenon that occasionally becomes visible at very low tides: the submerged forest of a Bronze Age woodland that grew on this shoreline approximately four to five thousand years ago, before rising sea levels after the last Ice Age gradually flooded the coastal plain. The stumps and fallen trunks of ancient trees emerge from the sand in sections of the beach when conditions are right, providing a direct and tangible connection to a landscape that was human-inhabited woodland several thousand years before the present coastline was established. The legend of Cantre'r Gwaelod, the drowned kingdom of the Welsh lowlands said to lie beneath Cardigan Bay, draws some of its mythological resonance from this visible evidence of actual coastal submergence. The dunes at the northern end of the beach at Ynyslas form part of the Dyfi National Nature Reserve, one of Wales's most important coastal nature reserves, and transition through a classic succession of coastal habitats from mobile dune through fixed dune grassland to the rare dune slack communities that support fen orchid and other nationally scarce plant species. The dune system provides excellent wildlife watching and walking and is managed by Natural Resources Wales. The wide Dyfi Estuary behind the dunes is an internationally important habitat for migratory birds, and the RSPB Ynys-hir reserve on the southern shore of the estuary provides excellent birdwatching facilities.