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

Portmeirion and Harlech

Eleven nights from Conwy to Betws-y-Coed: Edward I's castles at Conwy, Caernarfon, Beaumaris and Harlech, the boat to Ynys Enlli off the tip of the Llŷn, Portmeirion, then Snowdon by the Miners' Track and the scramble up Tryfan.

North Wales: Castles, the Llŷn and Eryri

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

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

Explore Harlech Castle, built by Edward I between 1282 and 1289, whose Lancastrian garrison held out from 1461 to 1468 — the siege remembered in 'Men of Harlech' — and which held out in the Civil War until 15 March 1647

Walk down the Way from the Sea, the water gate through which supplies reached the castle during the 1294–95 siege

Look down from the castle over the Royal St David's links and the Morfa Harlech dunes

Edward I built Harlech between 1282 and 1289 on a rock close to the Irish Sea, with a water gate and a long flight of steps down to the shore so the castle could be supplied by sea under siege. It needed them: Madog ap Llywelyn besieged it in 1294–95, Owain Glyndŵr took it in 1404 and made it his headquarters until 1409, and the Lancastrians held it for seven years before the Yorkists forced its surrender in 1468, the siege remembered in 'Men of Harlech'. The sea has since pulled back, and the castle now stands above the dunes and the beach.

Harlech: The Castle Supplied From the Sea

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

Walk through Portmeirion, the village Clough Williams-Ellis built between 1925 and 1975

Find the places used as 'the Village' in The Prisoner

Find the Fountain, where Noël Coward is said to have written Blithe Spirit

Walk down to the Dwyryd estuary below the village

Sir Clough Williams-Ellis designed and built Portmeirion between 1925 and 1975 on the estuary of the Dwyryd, two miles from Porthmadog, and denied that it was modelled on Portofino, though he admitted his love of the place. The main hotel building was the house of Aber Iâ, a private estate developed in the 1850s, and many of the buildings are listed, with the gardens Grade II* on the Cadw register. Noël Coward wrote Blithe Spirit while staying here, and in the 1960s it was 'the Village' in The Prisoner. In the woods just outside are the slight remains of a medieval castle that Gerald of Wales recorded in 1188.

Portmeirion: The Village Clough Williams-Ellis Built

Climb to Criccieth Castle and its twin-towered gatehouse

Walk both beaches on either side of the headland

Visit the Lloyd George Museum at Llanystumdwy

Eat an ice cream from Cadwaladers on the front

Criccieth Castle stands on a headland between two beaches. Llywelyn ap Iorwerth began it in the 1230s and his grandson Llywelyn ap Gruffudd extended it; Edward I took it in 1283 and heightened its towers, and it was captured again in 1404 in Owain Glyndŵr's revolt. David Lloyd George grew up at Llanystumdwy nearby.

Criccieth: Llywelyn's Castle Between Two Beaches

Walk the long bailey of Chepstow Castle above the Wye

See the castle's great gatehouse doors, their timber dated to the 12th century

Climb to the Devil's Pulpit for the view down on the abbey

Chepstow Castle was begun in 1067 for William FitzOsbern, the year after Hastings, and is the oldest surviving post-Roman stone fortification in Britain, stretched along the cliff above the Wye. About five miles up the Wye, Walter de Clare, Lord of Chepstow, founded Tintern on 9 May 1131 — the first Cistercian house in Wales and the second in Britain — and its roofless church in the wooded gorge drew Wordsworth and Turner.