Welsh Wonders

Wales is one of Europe's best-kept travel secrets — a small country of extraordinary character and fierce natural beauty, with a living Celtic culture, a language older than English and a landscape of dramatic contrasts. Our Welsh Wonders tour takes you from the vibrant, regenerated capital to the soaring peaks of Snowdonia and the magnificent medieval castles of the North Wales coast.

The tour begins in Cardiff, one of Europe's youngest and most dynamic capitals. The extraordinary Cardiff Castle — a Roman fort that became a Norman stronghold that became a Victorian fairy-tale palace — encapsulates Welsh history in a single extraordinary building. The rebuilt Cardiff Bay waterfront, with its striking contemporary architecture including the Welsh Parliament (the Senedd), is one of the finest urban regeneration projects in Britain.

The Brecon Beacons National Park offers some of the finest walking in Wales — open moorland, ancient waterfalls, remote cwms and the atmospheric ruins of Llanthony Priory, rising from the Black Mountains valley like a scene from a pre-Raphaelite painting.

North Wales is castle country. Conwy and Caernarfon castles — both UNESCO World Heritage Sites — are among the finest medieval fortifications in Europe, built by Edward I during his conquest of Wales in the late 13th century and still imposing, beautiful and brilliantly preserved eight centuries later. And presiding over all of north Wales is Snowdon (1,085m) — the highest mountain in England and Wales — which can be ascended by the scenic mountain railway for views over the entire Celtic landscape.