Wales

There’s a big barrier between England and Wales. Not just historical and cultural and whatever, but also the Bridge toll. This year it’s £5.40 for a car if you’re crossing to Wales (though it’s free if you’re coming back the other way), whichever of the two bridges you use. Both bridges are run by the same firm, which has been accused of profiteering.

Once we’re past that wee obstacle, though, you are in one of the best places in the world.

The average Englisher rarely thinks about going anywhere in Wales for leisure and tourism purposes. If this is you, you don’t know what you’re missing.

For your £5.40 admission charge you get some of the most unspoiled countryside in Britain. That golf club bar crap about the country being ‘overcrowded’ applies to the South of England, not Wales. The Days Out Guide has a growing personal collection of beautiful Welsh beaches that are empty or almost-empty on sunny bank holidays. Seriously.

If you’re a petrolhead, you get some lovely windy interactive country roads that will make you feel as though you’re in one of those car adverts where you’re the only one for miles round. Although this does not apply to the horrible Darwinian stretch of the M4 between the Bridge and Cardiff, nor indeed to any A-Road in Pembrokeshire, where the fun-loving locals have built a roundabout every 200 yards.

Wales also gives you loads of fascinating history, and a lot of fabulous historic attractions. Wales’s semi-independent status also has a refreshing socialist flavour to it, meaning that many Welsh attractions are quite cheap to get into, and some of the very best of them are completely free.

There’s not enough room here to list all the Welsh loveliness that’s an easy drive or train journey from Bristol, but here’s a few recommends:

BIG PIT: NATIONAL COAL MUSEUM
Blaenafon, Torfaen, NP4 9XP. Zone D. Open 9.30am-5pm daily, admission free. Ffi: 01495 790311, www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/bigpit • If you do nothing else in Wales, visit this place. Not only is it one of the best visitor attractions in the country (with awards and stuff to prove it), but it’s also completely free. It’s the national museum of an industry that was once hugely important in Wales and which is now all but gone, housed in an actual former coal-mine. The above-ground exhibitions and displays are very good, and the underground tours (usually conducted by actual ex-miners) are brilliant. All the more poignant if you’re old enough to remember how this once proud industry was destroyed.

CARDIFF CASTLE
Cardiff CF10 3RB. Zone D. Open daily 9am-6pm (shorter hours in winter), full admission £8.95 adult/£7.50 senior, student/£6.35 child. Ffi: 0292 087 8100, www.cardiffcastle.com • One of several good reasons for visiting Cardiff. Big medieval castle in the middle of the Welsh capital which for a long time belonged to the fabulously wealthy Bute family, who at one point pretty much owned the city. Most visitors are less impressed by the medieval bits than by the lavish Victorian Gothic interiors commissioned by one of the Butes, then reputedly the richest men in the world, in the 1860s. Castle is also home to the regimental museum of the Royal Regiment of Wales, and has extensive grounds to wander. BTW, if you get off on that opulent Pre-Raphaelite cod-medieval décor, then you should definitely also visit Castell Coch, on the outskirts of Cardiff, an absolutely magical fairytale fantasy (see tinyurl.com/ys24db).

ST FAGANS NATIONAL HISTORY MUSEUM
St Fagans, Cardiff CF5 6XB. Zone D. Open 10am-5pm daily, admission free. Ffi: 0292 057 3500, www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/stfagans • Formerly known as the Museum of Welsh Life, the place bills itself as one of the world’s leading open-air museums, and we won’t argue. Stands in 100 acres of parkland in the grounds of St Fagans Castle, and over the last 50 years more than 40 buildings from different periods of Welsh history have been re-created to make a sort of theme park of Welsh history as lived by ordinary people. There’s a Celtic village, houses, a farm, schoolhouse, Unitarian chapel, Working Men’s Institute (a stunning monument to the times when working class solidarity could achieve almost anything), and even a post-WW2 pre-fab bungalow. There are also exhibitions, and some of the buildings feature workshops where craftsmen demonstrate traditional skills. Some of the buildings have been made from scratch, while others have been taken from other locations for reconstruction. Marvellous place, with plenty of insight into working-class life whether you’re Welsh or not. And it’s free to get in. What’s not to love?

THE CENTRE FOR ALTERNATIVE TECHNOLOGY
Machynlleth, Powys SY20 9AZ. Zone D. Open 10am-5.30pm in season (closes at dusk in winter), admission £8.40 adult/£7.40 concs/£4.20 ages 5-15, £1 off for visitors arriving by bike, 50% off for arriving at Machynlleth by train. Ffi: 01654 705950, www.cat.org.uk • A bit of a trip from Bristol/Bath, but worth a mention as it’s widely regarded as Britain’s ultimate green theme park. Now obviously this place is infinitely preferable to Alton Towers on every conceivable level, but Lordy, it’s not that great. You can end up kinda resenting paying an admission charge to be told what a profligate and sinner you are when it comes to spending the world’s resources. It’s a bit shabby and run-down and tells you little you don’t already know, where what you’d like to see would be a positive and fun reflection of all the most up-to-date and exciting developments in sustainable technology. That said, the water-powered funicular railway that gets you up there from the car park is almost brilliant (and kids adore it). And it’s in some of the most beautiful countryside in the world, and it’s close to a town which, despite its unpronounceable name, is gorgeous. Machynlleth was once the Welsh capital, you know.

NATIONAL BOTANIC GARDEN OF WALES
Llanarthne, Carmarthenshire SA32 8HG. Zone D. Open 10am-6pm daily (10am-4.30pm Oct-March), admission £8 adult/£6.50 senior/£4 ages 5-16. Ffi: 01558 667148/9, www.gardenofwales.org.uk • If you’re into flowers, botany and all things planty, take a tip from us – forget the Eden Project and go here instead. This place is more interesting, the crowds are smaller and, if you’re driving from the Bristol/Bath area, it’s quicker and easier to get to than anywhere in Cornwall. Once an aristocratic estate, it’s now a visitor attraction and scientific research centre, with water gardens and state-of-the-art energy and recycling facilities. There are several different gardens organised along various themes, from the dinky Japanese Garden to the very impressive double walled garden and Tropical Glasshouse. The visitor centre includes a ‘Theatr Botanica’ where you can watch a 360-degree movie about ‘The Planet of Plants’ and an excellent section looking at medical plants and drugs and their history, complete with Apothecary’s Hall, a mock-up of a Victorian Welsh chemist’s shop. The centrepiece, though, is the Great Glasshouse, designed by Norman Foster and reputedly the largest single-span glasshouse in the world. It’s 95m long, 55m wide and partly below ground level – apparently it’s meant to look like a giant raindrop – and houses a world-class collection of plants from Mediterranean climates. All this and 560 acres of wandering and water gardens and not too many other people. A superb day out.

TECHNIQUEST
Stuart St, Cardiff Bay, Cardiff CF10 5BW. Zone D. Open 9.30am-4.30pm Mon-Fri, 10.30am-5.30pm Sat, Sun & BHM, admission £6.90 adult/£4.80 concs, ages 4-16/£20 family. Ffi: 0292 047 5475, www.techniquest.org • Excellent science discovery centre with all sorts of fun stuff to play with, plus regular demonstrations and changing exhibitions. Also a Planetarium show (£1.20 extra per person). Kinda like Explore At-Bristol. How about taking the family by train from Bristol and combining this with Cardiff Castle and/or a bit of shopping?

CALDICOT CASTLE & COUNTRY PARK
Caldicot, Monmouthshire MP26 4HU. Zone C. Open daily 11am-5pm from 1 Apr to end Sept (plus occasional weekends and special events in winter), 2009 admission TBC - last year was £3.75 adult/£2.50 child, senior, student, disabled (enabler gets in free). Ffi: 01291 420241, www.caldicotcastle.co.uk • Nice no-brainer of a day out – just a short run over the water. The castle is mostly ruins, dating back to the middle ages, but it was partly restored/rebuilt in the 19th century by one of those wealthy Victorians with a major medieval fetish. The castle was still being lived in until not that long ago. Look around the place, clamber onto the battlements to survey the surrounding countryside. There are lots of castley-type activities for kids, a dressing-up bit and other exhibitions. The grounds are OK, too, with river and woodland walks and wildlife pond complete with pond-dipping facilities. Hosts lots and lots of living history and re-enactment events over the season.

Towns and Beaches

Cardiff, the capital, with all the cultural and shopping facilities that entails, is fairly compact and is easily (and quite cheaply) reachable by train. Aside from the Castle and the redeveloped Bay area (where Techniquest is – see above), there’s also the spectacular Wales Millennium Centre (wmc.org.uk), a world-class performance venue with a broad mix of highbrow and populist entertainment.

Within easy reach of the bridges there’s some of the best seaside in Britain on the beautiful Gower Peninsula (www.explore-gower.co.uk). Seriously, if you’ve never done the Gower, do it now. Not only are there loads of almost empty and spectacular beaches and bits of coastline (try Three Cliffs Bay or the spectacular Rhossili Bay; for families there is the slightly more popular Oxwich Bay – and don’t forget the kite) but – and not a lot of people know this – Swansea Bay, which is the last bit of Swansea you go through before getting onto the Gower proper, boasts some very fine restaurants indeed, not to mention the stupendously wonderful Verdi’s ice-cream parlour, which you must not pass by even if you don’t normally do ice cream. At the very end of Swansea Bay is The Mumbles with its old-fashioned seaside pier, which is tacky, but great fun.

Go further, to Pembrokeshire say, and you’ve got all the surf and beauty of Cornwall with loads fewer people. Here is also where you find the seaside town of Tenby, a wonderful cramped little town with warrens of streets and alleyways. If you’re here, take a boat trip out to Caldey Island, which is run by Cistercian monks.

Head into mid-Wales and Cardigan Bay (OK, we’re probably into more than just a day out, here) and you stand a snowball’s chance of finding beaches that are virtually empty. Our favourite bits here are the downmarket resort of Borth with its vast, beautiful beach, and the quaint, winding little seaside village of New Quay, a former fishing village straight out of Dylan Thomas and now a small holiday resort; you can often spot dolphins and porpoises in the sea, or you can pay for a boat trip to get up closer to them. Cardigan Bay is also where you find Aberystwyth, an old-school seaside town that’s still a popular family holiday destination. It’s nice and clean and has a lot of charm and fun stuff to explore. Make sure you have a go on the Cliff Railway.

Inland, get beyond the heavily-populated Cardiff/Swansea area, and you’re into some breathtaking countryside, crossed by well-maintained and uncluttered roads connecting some lovely old-fashioned towns. Get yourself a copy of the latest ‘Rough Guide to Wales’ or find stuff on the web for Welsh ideas but some of our favourite Wales places include…

Llantony Valley & Priory, Gwent One of only a handful of places in Britain that has a genuinely mystical feel to it. Don’t visit before finding out about some of the strange, spooky history of this haunting place beforehand.

Caerleon in Gwent has the remains of a Roman legionary barracks and amphitheatre in the middle, plus a couple of museums of all the fascinating Roman stuff that’s been dug up down the years. Also a lot of sculptures and a very boho shopping precinct. A sort of miniature Glastonbury with lots of Welsh mysticism added. A very easy run from Bristol/Bath.

Lampeter is in the middle of nowhere and it has a university. Actually, it’s the sort of place where one might die of ennui if resident for more than a few days. But lovely to visit.

Llandrindod Wells is a beautiful old town, and home to an annual Victorian Festival in summer when all the townsfolk dress up in period costume and go a bit silly.

Brecon is what you imagine county towns like Taunton would have looked like in about 1960, and is set in the middle of some truly spectacular countryside. Can get a bit lively on a Saturday night, mind, due to a toxic combination of farm boys down from the hills and squaddies in from the local barracks.

Monmouth What was once a sleepy old town with bags of character is now 70% car park, but has some lovely old streets.

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