South Wales
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Three day trips from the Welsh capital, from the biggest castle in Wales to a ruined Cistercian abbey on the Wye and a seaside town two hours away by train. Here is what each one costs, how to reach it without a car, and which suits the day you have.
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A clifftop ruin above the River Cennen, with a barbican of pits, a twin-towered gatehouse and a vaulted cave passage in the rock beneath. Welsh princes held it, Edward I’s baron rebuilt it, and the victorious Yorkists had it destroyed in 1462.
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Cardiff’s car parks aren’t interchangeable: pick the wrong one and you’ll pay a shopping-centre rate to see a dinosaur, or a museum rate to catch a show. Here’s which one actually matches what you’re doing, and what each one costs.
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An Art Deco station in the exact centre of the city, with the castle an eight-minute walk out one exit and Cardiff Bay a change of train away from the other. Here’s the station car park’s real name and price, and how to reach everything without a car.
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Cardiff has no everyday bus park and ride, but it does have event-day shuttles for the Principality Stadium, 24 train stations with car parks, and a hospital-only route that catches out shoppers. Here’s which one you actually want.
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Regularly named one of the best beaches in Europe, and you can’t drive to it. There’s no road, no café, no toilets and no lifeguard on the sand itself – just a half-mile walk over the cliffs from Stackpole Quay, through an 18th-century archway built for a family who once had this beach to themselves.
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A church supposedly built wherever a Welsh warlord found a white ox with a black spot on its forehead, containing the oldest fabric of any cathedral in Wales — and a genuinely unusual two-level structure most visitors don’t expect.
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A Norman priory founded in 1093, home to the original regimental colours carried at Rorke’s Drift, sitting inside the only walled cathedral close in Wales — and yet one of Britain’s youngest cathedrals, only 100 years old.
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Deliberately built in a hollow so Viking raiders couldn’t spot it from the sea, in Britain’s smallest city, where two pilgrimages here were once said to count as one to Rome.
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A cathedral founded by a 6th-century Welsh saint, nearly destroyed by a wartime landmine, and rebuilt around a controversial 16-foot aluminium Christ — now one of Cardiff’s most popular concert venues too.