History and heritage: 48 hours in Monmouth

Modest and slow paced, this historic town is the perfect place to spend a weekend.

Formidable fortresses: the best castles in South Wales

From staggering stone-built strongholds to remarkable 15th-century fortifications.

Chepstow

One of the most anglicised of all Welsh towns, Chepstow (Cas-Gwent in Welsh, meaning ‘Castle of Gwent’) sits in a hairpin bend of the…

Blaenavon

Huddled under rolling moorland, Blaenavon is the archetypal Welsh mining streetscape of ruler-straight stone or rendered terraces of two-up, two-down houses. True, it can…

St David’s Peninsula

St David’s Peninsula is Wales at its windiest, wildest best – a corrugated coastline gashed with coves and beaches. While St David’s may be…

Tenby

In the endless debates about Britain’s most attractive seaside resort – pointless but good fun – Tenby is usually a frontrunner. One thing is…

Gower

The first area in Britain to be designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) in 1956, Gower is deserving of all the superlatives…

Swansea

‘An ugly lovely town’ was Dylan Thomas’s oddly contradictory assessment of Swansea, Wales’s second-largest city, with a population of around 310,000. Like Cardiff, Swansea…

Brecon Beacons

South Wales’s Brecon Beacons is walking country par excellence – there are some 163 peaks here – and although in parts as popular as Snowdonia, is…

Cardiff

One of Europe’s youngest and most dynamic cities, Cardiff is unrecognisable from the Welsh city of 20 years ago, having reinvented itself in a…

Tintern Abbey

No matter how many times you see it, Wales’s Tintern Abbey is always a majestic sight, and it’s little wonder that this place has…

When to visit South Wales

If you’re here to walk, then where in South Wales you want to walk is likely to influence when you come. If you’re walking…

Travel and visas in South Wales

Visas Citizens of all European countries – other than Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and most republics from the former Soviet…

Health and safety in South Wales

Health Overall, there’s nothing to be overly concerned about in terms of health when travelling in South Wales. The biggest health risks are likely…

Food and drink in South Wales

Food The Welsh culinary scene is almost unrecognisable from even just a decade ago, and it’s no longer the UK’s poor relation. Both the…