Other in Swansea

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.

Oxwich Bay is one of the finest and largest beaches on the Gower Peninsula in Swansea, a broad arc of sand stretching for approximately three miles between the limestone headland of Oxwich Point and the dunes and marshes of the Oxwich National Nature Reserve. The beach is backed by extensive sand dune systems and a freshwater marsh that together form one of the most diverse coastal habitats in Wales, supporting rare plant communities, breeding birds and a remarkable diversity of invertebrates in the transition zones between dune, marsh, woodland and sea. The National Nature Reserve designation reflects the exceptional ecological quality of the Oxwich area, which is one of the most biologically rich coastal sites in Wales. The ruined medieval Oxwich Castle above the bay adds a heritage dimension to the natural attractions, and the Gower Peninsula as a whole, as Britain's first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, provides a protected coastal landscape of exceptional quality.

Penllergaer Woods and Waterfall is a Victorian landscape garden and woodland park near Swansea in south Wales, created in the 1840s by John Dillwyn Llewelyn, a pioneering photographer and naturalist who developed the estate into one of the most remarkable designed landscapes in Wales. The estate was divided and neglected through much of the twentieth century, but a major restoration programme begun in the early 2000s has recovered much of the original character of the Victorian pleasure grounds, including the dramatic waterfall created by damming the Llan stream, the lake, woodland walks and the remnants of the exotic tree and shrub plantings introduced by Llewelyn. The restoration is ongoing and the estate is managed by the Penllergare Valley Woods Community Benefit Society as a freely accessible nature and heritage site providing exceptional woodland walking within the greater Swansea area.

Plantasia is a large tropical glasshouse visitor attraction in the centre of Swansea, housing an extraordinary collection of exotic plants and animals in a purpose-built domed structure that creates a warm tropical environment in the Welsh climate. The glasshouse presents plants from tropical rainforests, desert regions and other climatic zones in themed areas, with mature trees, orchids, carnivorous plants and hundreds of tropical species alongside a diverse animal collection including reptiles, meerkats and leaf-cutting ants. Situated within the Parc Tawe development in central Swansea and operated by Swansea Council, Plantasia has been open since 1990 and remains one of the most distinctive visitor experiences in south Wales.

St Davids Cathedral is one of the most important religious sites in Britain, the mother church of the Church in Wales and the traditional shrine of St David, the patron saint of Wales, who founded a monastic community here in the sixth century. The cathedral stands in a hollow in the smallest city in Britain, its massive purple sandstone tower visible above the surrounding walls and rooftops but the full scale of the building revealed only when you descend the Thirty-Nine Steps from the market cross and see it rising before you from the floor of the sheltered valley it has occupied for nearly 1,500 years. The current cathedral was begun in 1181 by Bishop Peter de Leia under the patronage of King Henry II, who made a pilgrimage to St Davids in the same year as penance for his role in the murder of Thomas Becket. The building demonstrates the Romanesque to Gothic transition that characterised ecclesiastical architecture in the late twelfth century, with the solid round arches and massive piers of the nave contrasting with the more delicate Gothic additions made to the presbytery and Lady Chapel in subsequent centuries. The nave arcade leans noticeably outward as a result of subsidence on the soft ground, giving the interior a slightly vertiginous quality that enhances rather than diminishes its character. The nave ceiling is one of the most ornate in Britain, a late fifteenth-century Irish oak roof richly carved with pendant and decorative panels that catches the light filtering through the cathedral's windows to create an effect of extraordinary warmth and complexity. Beneath the high altar stands the shrine of St David himself, restored in the late twentieth century and once again a focus for pilgrimage. In the medieval period two pilgrimages to St Davids were considered equivalent to one to Rome, and three to be equal to visiting Jerusalem, a testament to the importance of this remote location in the religious geography of medieval Christendom. The ruins of Bishop Gower's episcopal palace adjacent to the cathedral are among the finest medieval ecclesiastical ruins in Wales, their arcaded parapets and great hall standing as testament to the wealth and ambition of the medieval bishops of this poor but spiritually rich diocese.

The Mumbles is a picturesque village and resort at the western end of Swansea Bay in south Wales, occupying a limestone headland that marks the entrance to the Gower Peninsula and providing one of the most attractive coastal villages in Wales. The village is known for its independent restaurants, ice cream parlours, boutiques and the Victorian pleasure pier that extends into the bay from the village seafront. The Mumbles lighthouse on the outer headland, the Victorian pier, the Norman castle ruin above the harbour and the views across Swansea Bay toward the city and the distant Brecon Beacons together create a coastal setting of considerable charm. The Mumbles was the birthplace of Catherine Zeta-Jones and has a strong cultural identity as the social and leisure hub of Swansea's western suburbs. The headland marks the beginning of the Gower Peninsula coast path, one of the finest coastal walking routes in Wales.

Worm's Head is a serpentine tidal headland extending approximately 1.5 kilometres into the Bristol Channel from the western end of the Gower Peninsula in South Wales, its low, ridged profile giving it the appearance from the shore of a great sea creature partly submerged, from which the name derives: the Old English word wyrm meant dragon or sea serpent, and the headland's sinuous shape and exposed position above the Atlantic swell make the comparison entirely natural. It is one of the most dramatic tidal features on the Welsh coast and the experience of crossing to it and back is one of the most memorable short adventures the peninsula offers. The crossing to Worm's Head is possible only for approximately two and a half hours either side of low tide, and the timing must be taken seriously. The causeway of rough limestone rock that connects the headland to the mainland at Rhossili can be crossed on foot when exposed but is quickly covered as the tide returns, and the tidal range here is one of the largest in the world. Visitors who misjudge the tide and become stranded on the headland must wait for the next low tide, sometimes several hours, before returning. Dylan Thomas famously spent a night stranded on the Head as a young man, an experience he described in his essay Who Do You Think Was With Us. The headland itself divides into the Outer Head, the Inner Head and the Devil's Bridge connecting them, a natural arch of limestone through which the sea surges even in moderate conditions. The Outer Head is the highest point, rising to around 46 metres, and from its summit on a clear day the view extends north across Carmarthen Bay toward the Pembrokeshire coast and south across the Channel toward Devon and Somerset. The cliffs support nesting seabirds during the spring and summer breeding season, including guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes and fulmars. The clifftop at Rhossili above the causeway provides the most dramatic viewpoint over the headland and the sweep of Rhossili Bay below, one of the most celebrated coastal vistas in Wales.