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Monmouthshire, Wales’s easternmost county, abuts the English border and contains the bucolic charms of the River Wye and Tintern Abbey. To the west and north, although the coal mines no longer operate, the world-famous Valleys retain their tight-knit towns and a rich working-class heritage, and some excellent museums and colliery tours, including Big Pit at Blaenafon and the Rhondda Heritage Park in Trehafod.
The Valleys course down to the great ports of the coast, which once shipped Wales’s products all over the world. The greatest of them all was Cardiff, now Wales’s upbeat capital and an essential stop. Further west is Wales’s second city, Swansea – rougher, tougher and less anglicized than Cardiff, it sits on an impressive arc of coast that shelves round to the delightful Gower Peninsula, replete with grand beaches, rocky headlands, bracken heaths and ruined castles.
Carmarthenshire, often missed out, is well worth visiting: of all the routes radiating from the county town of Carmarthen, the most glorious is the winding road to Llandeilo along the Tywi Valley, past ruined hilltop forts and two of the country’s finest gardens. Immediately east sits Wales’s most impressively sited castle at Carreg Cennen, high on a dizzy rock-plug on the edge of the Black Mountain. The wide sands fringing Carmarthen Bay stretch towards the popular seaside resort of Tenby, a major stop on the 186-mile Pembrokeshire Coast Path. The rutted coastline of St Bride’s Bay is the most glorious part of the coastal walk, which leads north to brush past the impeccable mini-city of St Davids, whose exquisite cathedral shelters in a protective hollow. Nearby are plenty of opportunities for spectacular coast and hill walks, boat crossings to nearby islands, wildlife-watching and numerous outdoor activities.
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Get ready to explore Britain on this unique self-drive road trip. Choose the car of your liking before you hit the road: from the Cotswolds and its picturesque villages over the Beatle's favorite hang-out in Liverpool to Scotland's capital Edinburgh: this trip includes many highlights to be explored
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has inspired writers and painters for more than two centuries – Wordsworth and Turner among them. Such is its popularity, however, that it’s best to go out of season or at either end of the day to avoid the crowds. The abbey was founded in 1131 by Cistercian monks from Normandy, though most of the remaining buildings date from the massive rebuilding and expansion of the fourteenth century, when Tintern was at its mightiest. Its survival after the Dissolution is largely due to its remoteness, as there were no nearby villages ready to use the abbey stone for rebuilding.
The centrepiece of the complex is the magnificent Gothic church, whose remarkable tracery and intricate stonework remain intact. Around the church are the less substantial ruins of the monks’ domestic quarters and cloister, mostly reduced to one-storey rubble. The course of the abbey’s waste-disposal system can be seen in the Great Drain, an irregular channel that links kitchens, toilets and the infirmary with the nearby Wye. The Novices’ Hall lies handily close to the Warming House, which together with the kitchen and infirmary would have been the abbey’s only heated areas, suggesting that novices might have gained a falsely favourable impression of monastic life before taking their final vows.
written by Rough Guides Editors
updated 6.06.2021
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