Ride the cliff railway up Constitution Hill

Look through the camera obscura at the top

Walk the promenade and kick the bar at the north end

See the manuscripts at the National Library of Wales

The Aberystwyth Cliff Railway opened on 1 August 1896 and runs 237 metres up Constitution Hill — the second longest funicular in the British Isles after Lynton and Lynmouth — to a camera obscura, a 1985 rebuild of the one the Victorian developers put up. Below it the promenade runs south past the pier to the castle ruins; at its north end, under the hill, students still kick the bar, and the National Library of Wales stands on the hill above the town.

Aberystwyth: The Cliff Railway and the Camera Obscura

Aberystwyth

From Bannau Brycheiniog to Cadair Idris: Pen y Fan and the dark skies, the bookshops of Hay and the Gospel Pass, red kites over the Elan Valley, and the mountain bike trails of Coed y Brenin.

Mid Wales: The Beacons to Cadair Idris

Aberystwyth and Devil's Bridge

Fishguard

Nine nights in a loop from Fishguard: Cardigan Bay's dolphins, the steam railway to Devil's Bridge, red kites and dark skies in the Elan Valley, then Pen y Fan and the waterfalls of Bannau Brycheiniog.

Mid Wales and the Beacons from Fishguard

Ride the Vale of Rheidol Railway up from Aberystwyth

Look down at the three stacked bridges over the Mynach

Walk the Jacob's Ladder steps down into the gorge

Take the short Punchbowl and Three Bridges walk down to the Devil's Punchbowl

At Devil's Bridge the Mynach drops through a gorge to meet the Rheidol, and three bridges stand stacked one above another, built hundreds of years apart. The Vale of Rheidol Railway, narrow gauge and steam-hauled, climbs twelve miles up from Aberystwyth to the station above the falls.

Devil's Bridge: Three Bridges on Top of Each Other

Visit the Owain Glyndŵr Centre in the Parliament House, whose exhibition opens on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays

Come on a Wednesday for the market granted by Edward I's charter of 1291

Find the Royal House on the corner of the Garsiwn, where tradition says Dafydd Gam was held for trying to kill Glyndŵr

Stand under the clock tower at the crossroads, raised for Viscount Castlereagh's coming of age in 1873

Go round the galleries of MOMA Machynlleth beside the Tabernacle

Machynlleth, a market town in the Dyfi valley, was the seat of Owain Glyndŵr's Welsh parliament in 1404, and on that strength it calls itself the ancient capital of Wales, though it has never been officially recognised as one. Edward I's charter of 1291 granted it a market every Wednesday 'for ever', and the Wednesday market still runs. The Royal House on the corner of the Garsiwn is one of its medieval houses; tradition says Dafydd Gam was held there from 1404 to 1412 for trying to kill Glyndŵr, and that Charles I stayed in 1643. The clock tower at the crossroads, 23.7m high, was paid for by the townspeople to mark the coming of age of Viscount Castlereagh, heir of the Londonderrys of Plas Machynlleth, in 1873. Laura Ashley opened her first shop here in 1961, and MOMA Machynlleth shows modern art in and beside a converted Wesleyan chapel. North of the town the Centre for Alternative Technology, opened in 1973 in the Llwyngwern slate quarry, now opens only to booked groups, courses and events.

Machynlleth: Glyndŵr's Parliament Town

Take a boat from New Quay to look for bottlenose dolphins

Watch from the pier or the headland for dolphins close inshore

Walk the painted Georgian streets around Aberaeron's harbour

Eat honey ice cream on the quay at Aberaeron

Cardigan Bay holds the largest resident population of bottlenose dolphins in Britain, and boats run out of New Quay's harbour to look for them; Dylan Thomas lived here during the war and the town is one of the sources of Under Milk Wood. Up the coast, Aberaeron was laid out as a planned Georgian harbour town, its houses painted in blocks of colour around the basin.

New Quay and Aberaeron: Dolphins and a Georgian Harbour

Climb Cadair Idris (Penygadair, 893m) above Dolgellau by the Minffordd Path

Look into Llyn Cau, the glacial cirque lake below the summit crags

Look out from the summit over Cardigan Bay and the Mawddach estuary; legend says anyone who spends a night up here comes down a poet or a madman

Cadair Idris rises above Dolgellau at the southern edge of Eryri, and its summit, Penygadair, is 893m. The Minffordd Path climbs past Llyn Cau, a glacial lake in the cirque below the summit crags, and the top looks out over Cardigan Bay and the Mawddach estuary. Legend says anyone who spends a night on the summit comes down a poet or a madman.

Cadair Idris: The Chair of Idris

Walk the footway across Barmouth Bridge over the estuary

Cycle or walk the Mawddach Trail towards Dolgellau

Look across to Cadair Idris from the quay

Barmouth stands where the Mawddach meets the sea under Cadair Idris, and the railway crosses the estuary on a timber viaduct with a walkway beside the track. Across the bridge the old railway line is now the Mawddach Trail, about eight flat miles along the water from Morfa Mawddach to Dolgellau.

Barmouth and the Mawddach: The Bridge and the Estuary Walk

Ride the trails at Coed y Brenin, the 9,000-acre forest near Dolgellau where races were first held in 1991; it has seven waymarked mountain bike trails, from short family loops to the 35km Beast

Ride one of the graded red routes through the forest

Walk or ride to the waterfalls on the Afon Mawddach in the forest

Coed y Brenin, 9,000 acres of forest north of Dolgellau, holds the first trails in Britain built specifically for mountain bikes, cut in the 1990s and still the benchmark: rocky, rooty and graded from family loops to the long black routes.

Coed y Brenin: Britain's First Purpose-Built Mountain Bike Centre

Walk among the tall black net shops on the Stade

Ride the East Hill and West Hill cliff railways

Walk the ruins of Hastings Castle on the West Hill

Go into St Clement's Caves under the West Hill

Hastings still lands its fish off the beach at the Stade, where the fleet is winched up the shingle and the tall black net shops stand in rows, built high and narrow because each stands on a tiny plot of a once-cramped beach. Two funiculars climb the cliffs on either side of the old town, and on the West Hill stand the ruins of the castle William ordered built here in 1066 and the smugglers' caves dug out of the soft sandstone below it.