Walking · Wales
The first nation on earth with a continuous path around its entire coast — 870 miles of it — plus three mountain national parks and a language older than English. Wales is small, wild, and made for walkers.
Why walk here
In 2012 Wales became the first country in the world to open a continuous waymarked path around its entire coast. Eight hundred and seventy miles from Chepstow to Chester, taking in Pembrokeshire's sea cliffs, the Llŷn Peninsula, Anglesey's beaches, and the Dee estuary. It changed how the country walks itself.
Inland, three national parks — Eryri (Snowdonia), the Brecon Beacons, and Pembrokeshire Coast — hold most of Wales's serious mountain walking. The Cambrian Way crosses the country north to south along the spine of it. Offa's Dyke follows the English border for 177 miles. And Glyndŵr's Way loops through the mid-Wales hills that most visitors never see.
Everywhere you walk, place names are in Welsh — Cymraeg, the oldest living language in Britain. Learning to say a few is part of the trip. So is the food: laverbread, cockles, Welsh Black beef, and cheese from farmhouses in the Preseli hills.
The trails we walk
Every trail is walked and re-walked before we open it. We'd rather do four brilliantly than forty badly.
Book nowPembrokeshire
293 km · 8–14 days
The full 293 km sweep of Britain's only coastal national park — Amroth to St Dogmaels, walked as three self-guided stages or in one push.
Book nowYnys Môn
200 km · 9–12 days
A full loop of Anglesey — Ynys Môn — with Snowdonia rising across the Menai Strait. Sea cliffs, hidden coves, and Neolithic burial chambers on the headlands.
The trails on one map
Lines follow each trail's waypoints — live trail pages draw the full GPX route. Tap a line to see the trail.
Reasons to linger
Eat
Welsh cooking runs on what the coast and the hills provide. Cockles and laverbread for breakfast in Gower. Welsh Black beef at The Hardwick in Abergavenny. Salt-marsh lamb on the Llŷn. And bara brith with a pot of tea in almost any village.
Drink
The Ship at Red Wharf Bay on Anglesey. The Sloop at Porthgain. The Bull at Beaumaris. Wales does the seaside pub better than almost anywhere — a pint of local ale, chips on the wall, and a view of the boats coming in.
Sleep
We book you into working-farm B&Bs, coaching inns like the Bull at Beaumaris (1472), and Georgian townhouses along the coast. Small, family-run, and used to walkers arriving with sand in their boots.
Read
Jan Morris's The Matter of Wales. Jim Perrin's Snowdon. Owen Sheers's Resistance. R. S. Thomas's collected poems. Wales writes itself best in books like these — take one for the train.
From the journal
Elise Downing ran the Ridgeway in three days. Two friends tried to walk the same distances. It went about as well as last time.
Sarah and Ros walk a trail together every year — arriving from opposite ends of the country to spend one week together, all the planning sorted. This year it was the South Downs Way. On day five, they walked a mile with Bill Bailey.
Chris Townsend walked the GR5 in autumn, with a tarp on his back and the huts closing behind him.
