Travel guide reveals Wales’s ‘ultimate experiences’

by Steffan Rhys, Western Mail

HOARDING books in Hay-on-Wye and walking the walls of Conwy Castle have been listed among the planet’s ultimate travel experiences by one of the world’s leading guide books.

Rough Guides’ new compilation, Make the Most of Your Time on Earth: A Rough Guide to the World, lists 1,000 adventures from around the world, including looking for brown bears in Alaska, kayaking amid icebergs at the north pole and trekking in the sacred peaks of the Himalayas.

But among the polar, the far-flung and the exotic are six Welsh experiences that the seasoned travellers say rank alongside the most captivating on earth.

The Pembrokeshire Coastal Path is described as having “resisted the onslaught of the 21st Century in all but a few hotspots such as Tenby and St David’s”.

“To walk the full length of the [143-mile] path takes up to two weeks and involves more ascent than climbing Mount Everest, but even just a half-day outing along the trail is worth the effort, and acts as a reminder that Britain boasts some of the finest coastline in the world,” say the authors.

Hay-on-Wye, where there is one bookstore for every 40 people, is described as “a bibliophilic Mecca to be reckoned with” where bookshops “exist outside the space-time continuum”, while hiking in Snowdonia yields a “rugged majesty”, a “tightly packed kernel of soaring cliff faces, jagged pinnacles and plunging waterfalls” and, in the 3,200ft Tryfan, the only mountain in Wales that can’t be scaled without using your hands.

The surge in the popularity of mountain biking in Wales can be seen both in the fact that a series of purpose-built trails have been forged from Snowdonia to the Swansea Valley and that the International Mountain Biking Association has long held Wales to be one of the world’s leading off-road biking destinations.

“Hit the trails when the sun is shining, when the views stretch far into the distance, and you’ll begin to understand why this really is some of the finest mountain biking on earth,” says the Rough Guide.

Recommending a climb of the eight wind-whipped towers of Conwy Castle’s 13th Century battlements, which formed part of Edward I’s “iron ring” designed to subdue the Welsh, the guide goes on to advise a circuit of the old town’s walls and a pint on the quay.

Describing Senghenydd, near Caerphilly, as a town clinging to a hillside and still bearing the scars of coal mining, the guide names it as the place to experience its final Welsh entry – hearing a male voice choir, which in this instance means the 61-man Aber Valley Male Voice Choir, who practice twice a week in the village’s ex-servicemen’s club and perform around the world.

Rough Guides publishing director Martin Dunford writes in the book’s introduction, “The best kind of travel experience should be something you would recommend to others, something you would want to tell your friends or family about, an experience you’ll always remember.

“It could be about the sense of awe you felt the first time you set eyes on an iconic building or looked out across a special landscape.

“It might be the camaraderie of joining the locals at a village fiesta or the epic train ride you took to get there.

“But it’s possible to have some of the best travel experiences without going very far at all. Travel isn’t only about distance and long-haul flights.

“They are driven by taste, but also opportunity. Some are very easy to do, others less so.

“What they have in common is that they are all Rough Guides writers’ personal recommendations, accumulated over the 25 years of our existence.

“And they are designed to evoke the same in you that they originally did in us.”