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

New Quay and Aberaeron

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

Visit Cardigan Castle and the eisteddfod story

Watch the falls at Cenarth from the 1787 bridge

See the coracles at the National Coracle Centre

Walk the Teifi estuary path below the town

Rhys ap Gruffydd took Cardigan Castle in 1166, rebuilt it in stone in 1171, and held the first recorded eisteddfod there in 1176; the Teifi runs past it to the sea. Six miles upstream at Cenarth the river drops over falls beside an old water mill that now holds the National Coracle Centre, and the bridge of 1787 was built by William Edwards and his son David.

Cardigan and Cenarth: The Teifi Coracles

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

Stand under the capstone of Pentre Ifan, balanced on three stone tips

Find the portal stones and the stone that seems to block the entrance

Go into the rebuilt roundhouses at Castell Henllys

Find out how the roundhouses were rebuilt on their original Iron Age foundations

Pentre Ifan, above Nevern in north Pembrokeshire, is the largest and best preserved Neolithic dolmen in Wales. Its capstone, five metres long, is thought to weigh 16 tonnes and rests on the tips of three uprights two and a half metres off the ground; it was raised around 3500 BC, traditionally as a communal burial. A few kilometres away, Castell Henllys is an Iron Age hillfort where four roundhouses and a granary have been rebuilt on their original foundations, some 2,000 years old — the only place in Britain where that has been done.

Pentre Ifan and Castell Henllys: Stone Age and Iron Age

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

Walk up to Dinefwr Castle on its bluff above the Tywi

Walk the deer park below the castle tower

Go through Newton House and its Edwardian rooms

Walk into Llandeilo and over the Tywi bridge

Dinefwr was the chief seat of the dynasty that ruled Deheubarth, held by Hywel Dda and rebuilt, it is thought, by Rhys ap Gruffydd, who ruled from 1155 to 1197. A narrow spiral stair climbs its tower for the view over the deer park to the north and the Tywi valley to the south, and Newton House was built beside it in 1660, when the old keep was turned into a summer house.

Llandeilo and Dinefwr: The Seat of the Lord Rhys

Walk the Great Glasshouse and its Mediterranean planting

Walk the double walled garden and the Regency lakes

The National Botanic Garden of Wales opened on 24 May 2000 on the old Middleton estate, and its centrepiece is Norman Foster's Great Glasshouse — billed as the largest single-span glasshouse in the world, about 99m by 55m — holding the plants of the Mediterranean climates. Carmarthen, a few miles west, has the remains of a Roman amphitheatre and one of the oldest markets in Wales.