South Wales
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Built on the ruins of a burned-down Regency water park and centred on the world’s largest single-span glasshouse, this was the first new national botanic garden created anywhere in the UK in almost 200 years.
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A 5-star family campsite a short woodland walk from one of Britain’s most photographed beaches, with a ruined Norman castle on the headland and a genuinely tidal river to cross before you reach the sand.
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Once a year, this small Pembrokeshire seaside town closes its roads, lines its medieval walls with tens of thousands of spectators, and hosts one of the toughest full-distance triathlons on the planet.
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A Victorian seaside resort, a vanished Butlins holiday camp, and the real-life home of Gavin & Stacey — plus one of the biggest tidal ranges on Earth, which genuinely changes how Whitmore Bay looks from one hour to the next.
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A real Welsh coal mine, closed in 1980 and reopened as a free museum three years later, where former miners still take visitors 300 feet underground into the original workings.
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A three-mile sweep of Gower sand regularly ranked among the world’s best beaches, a shipwreck slowly resurfacing from the sand, and a tidal island you can only reach for five hours a day — here’s what to know before you time your visit.
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186 miles of cliff-top path along Britain’s only fully coastal National Park — walkable end to end in a fortnight, or in any one of over a hundred shorter circular sections, with a genuinely useful bus network built specifically for walkers.
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South Wales’ highest peak is genuinely achievable for a reasonably fit family in good weather — but it’s still a proper mountain with a 4,000-year history, a memorial to a child who died lost on it, and weather that can turn in minutes. Here’s what to know before you go.
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A Grade II-listed tinplate warehouse fused with a glass-and-slate extension, built to hold 300 years of Welsh industry on the exact dock where much of it once left the country.
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Wander one of Europe’s great sand dune systems, where rare fen orchids bloom above a Norman castle buried by the tide of sand — Kenfig National Nature Reserve is South Wales’ wildest corner.