Mid Wales and the Beacons from Fishguard

Editor's note

One night near Cardigan to start. Rhys ap Gruffydd rebuilt Cardigan Castle in stone in 1171 and held the first recorded eisteddfod there in 1176; visit it, then walk the Teifi estuary path below the town. Nine miles upstream at Cenarth, watch the falls from the bridge William Edwards and his son built in 1787, and see the coracles in the old corn mill. Above Nevern, stand under Pentre Ifan, whose five-metre capstone balances on three stone tips, and go into the roundhouses at Castell Henllys, the only place in Britain where Iron Age houses have been rebuilt on their original foundations.

Editor's note

One night on Cardigan Bay, home to the largest resident population of bottlenose dolphins in Britain. Take a boat out of New Quay to look for them, or watch from the pier and the headland for dolphins close inshore. Dylan Thomas lived in the town during the war, and it is one of the sources of Under Milk Wood. Up the coast, walk the streets of Aberaeron, laid out as a planned Georgian harbour town with its houses painted in blocks of colour round the basin, and eat honey ice cream on the quay.

Editor's note

Two nights at Aberystwyth. Ride the cliff railway, opened in 1896, up Constitution Hill and look through the camera obscura at the top. Walk the promenade from the castle ruins to the pier and kick the bar at the north end, as the students do, then see the manuscripts at the National Library of Wales. Give a day to the Vale of Rheidol Railway, narrow gauge and steam-hauled, twelve miles up to Devil's Bridge. There, three bridges stand one above another over the Mynach; take the Jacob's Ladder steps into the gorge and follow the trail to the Devil's Punchbowl.

Editor's note

Two nights by Rhayader, the market town on the upper Wye. At Gigrin Farm, hundreds of red kites come in to the afternoon feed; watch from a hide and look for a pale leucistic bird among them. Follow the Elan Valley Trail past the dams of the reservoir chain, and come back after dark to stand on the Craig Goch dam and look up. The Elan Valley is a Dark Sky Park, and the long nights from October to March give the darkest skies. In Llandrindod Wells, walk Rock Park to the old pump room and chalybeate spring, and round the ornamental lake of the 1870s.

Editor's note

Two nights in Bannau Brycheiniog. Climb Pen y Fan, 886m and the highest point in south Wales, by the graded path from the Storey Arms, a 460m ascent, to the reconstructed Bronze Age cairn on the summit and its twin on Corn Du. The area became an International Dark Sky Reserve in 2013, the first in Wales: on a clear night, find the Andromeda Galaxy by eye from Mynydd Illtud Common. Around Ystradfellte, walk the Four Waterfalls Trail and go behind the water at Sgwd yr Eira, then see Henrhyd Falls, 27m high, the Batcave entrance in the Dark Knight films.

Editor's note

One night by Llandeilo, the last before the crossing home. Walk up to Dinefwr Castle on its bluff over the Tywi, chief seat of the rulers of Deheubarth, and climb the narrow spiral stair for the view over the deer park. Newton House, built beside it in 1660, has Edwardian rooms to go through. At the National Botanic Garden of Wales, walk through Norman Foster's Great Glasshouse, 110m by 60m and the largest single-span glasshouse in the world, then go on to Carmarthen for the Roman amphitheatre and one of the oldest markets in Wales.