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For those coming to Wales from outside the UK, cheap flights to London are readily available. Cardiff and beyond are easily reached from there by train. Alternatively, some routes fly in to Cardiff Airport.
If you’re already in the UK, the main towns and cities are accessible by train or you can coach it or drive. Lots of the great walks in Wales are away from the towns and cities, so either driving all the way or hiring a car when you get to the station nearest the countryside is recommended. Wales’s tourism board has done a pretty good job of advertising the country on British television in recent years. Adverts have given viewers a glimpse of the beautiful rolling green hills. Travel writer Jan Morris is probably the best literary champion for the country. She explores it through use of rich descriptive language and points out the places teeming with folklore.
For many, the Gower is top of the list for a holiday that combines walking with the beach. Three Cliffs Bay on the south coast of the Gower Peninsula is very popular indeed. A little way from Three Cliffs Bay is a campsite called Nicholaston Farm Family Caravan and Camping site. The campsite is four-star rated. It has excellent facilities including new toilets and showers that are cleaned very regularly and a kitchen with fridge-freezers along with other amenities in it. There is also a café that serves great breakfasts (although the boiled eggs arrive cold) and wonderful ice cream.
From the campsite, there is a path that goes through idyllic woodland until it reaches the sand dunes of the magnificent Oxwich Bay. The bay has been named by numerous travel writers to be Britain’s best beach, and while Wales has many lovely beaches, Oxwich Bay really is breathtaking. The beach is vast, stretching far along the coast as well as having a great expanse of sand from the foot of the dunes to the shoreline. All kinds of pretty shells wash up on the beach from mussels to clams, interesting because they are entirely different to those that wash up on the south coast of England.
As the seawater in Oxwich Bay is shallow, the sea is often warmer than the sea in other parts of the UK. This makes for fantastic swimming opportunities.
When you’ve done all the walking and swimming you like, at the end of the day there are a few pubs near to the campsite. Some are surrounded by sheep which seem to amble around wherever they please.
If you want a bit more than just the one pub, Mumbles is a short drive from the Oxbridge Bay area. Here you will find seaside shops as well as many great and varied restaurants. There are also bars up a hill a little way which are open until the small hours of the morning. Because campsites have a sort of noise-curfew, a trip to Mumbles in the evening if you want to talk late into the night is a good option for your neighbours on the campsite as well as yourself.
BIO
Sophie Collard (@QunoSpotter) writes about fascinating places to visit and people she’s met while on her travels. She’s travelled in the UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia and loves the sense of distance and changing landscapes.
