Wales Holidays and Escorted Coach Tours
Wales fits a great deal into a small country. Edward I's castles ring the north coast, the cliffs and coves of Pembrokeshire run for the best part of 200 miles, and inland there are moors, book towns and a scattering of narrow-gauge railways that climb where the roads give up. It is also a country of very narrow lanes, which is exactly why it suits travelling by coach.
Our Welsh holidays are usually five days, based in one hotel — Tenby, Caernarfon, Llandudno, Llandrindod Wells, Swansea — with a driver for the whole trip and a set programme of excursions. Gardens on one tour, coast and castles on the next.
Frequently Asked Questions About Our Wales Tours
Enough to see things properly, and rarely more than that. Castles mean steps, cobbles and uneven ground; gardens mean gravel paths and slopes; a coastal stop might involve a level walk to a viewpoint. You are never obliged to do any of it, and there is usually a town, a tea room or the coach to sit in instead. If you want to know what a particular day asks of you, ask us before you book.
Most of our Welsh tours set aside a number of single rooms with no supplement at all — on some tours that is several rooms, on others rather more. They tend to go early, so it is worth enquiring as soon as you have a date in mind. Where a supplement applies once those rooms are taken, it is shown on the individual tour page. Ask us and we will tell you what is left on a specific departure.
Private coach travel and the services of the driver throughout, four nights' accommodation on a five-day tour, breakfast and evening meals every day, the excursions listed in the itinerary, and cancellation protection. Named entrance fees, such as the Royal Mint or the Radnorshire Museum, are included where the tour says so. On National Trust properties the tour price covers entry for members, so please check the individual tour if you are not a member.
North Wales if you want castles and mountain railways in one week — Caernarfon, Conwy, Yr Wyddfa and Anglesey are all within an hour or so of each other. Pembrokeshire if the coast matters more, with Tenby as a base and the national park either side of it. Mid Wales suits people who have been to both and want somewhere quieter, with Llandrindod Wells and Hay-on-Wye at its centre.
Yes. Our Private Group tours take the whole coach for one group — a gardening club, U3A branch, church group or a large family party. The itinerary can be adjusted to suit what your members actually want to see, and the date is yours rather than ours. Numbers, timings and the joining arrangements all depend on the group, so the best next step is to tell us roughly how many of you there are.
No. The Snowdon Mountain Railway does the climbing, from Llanberis to the summit station, and the ascent takes about an hour. It is worth knowing that in strong winds or poor visibility the trains sometimes turn back at an intermediate station rather than reach the top — that is the mountain's decision, not the railway's, and it happens most often early and late in the season.
North Wales, Eryri and Anglesey
Our northern tours are based in Caernarfon or Llandudno, both within easy reach of Eryri (Snowdonia) and the Menai Strait. Caernarfon and Conwy castles were begun for Edward I in the 1280s and both still have their town walls attached; the circuit of the walls at Conwy takes about half an hour at a gentle pace.
The railways are half the pleasure. The Snowdon Mountain Railway has worked on the rack-and-pinion principle since 1896 and takes roughly an hour to climb to the summit station on Yr Wyddfa, 1,085 metres up. The Llanberis Lake Railway is a gentler run along the shore of Llyn Padarn.
Portmeirion appears on several itineraries — Clough Williams-Ellis's Italianate village above the Dwyryd estuary, which he added to for fifty years. Cruises on the Menai Strait pass under Telford's suspension bridge of 1826 before crossing to Anglesey.
The Pembrokeshire Coast and Tenby
Pembrokeshire has Britain's only coastal national park, and the path that follows it runs 186 miles from Amroth round to St Dogmaels. Our tours here stay in Tenby, a walled town on a headland between two beaches, where the Tudor Merchant's House has stood in narrow Quay Hill since the late fifteenth century.
Days out spread in both directions. St Davids, the smallest city in Britain, has a cathedral set below street level in a hollow so it could not be seen from the sea. Stackpole to the south takes in the Bosherston lily ponds and the walk down to Barafundle Bay. Colby Woodland Garden sits in a wooded valley near Amroth, and Cilgerran Castle stands above the Teifi gorge, where coracles are still raced in summer.
Local craft and produce get a look in too: the lovespoons workshop, and the vineyards that have quietly established themselves across west Wales.
Welsh Gardens and Country Houses
Wales grows things that struggle further east. The Gulf Stream keeps the western gardens mild enough for tender shrubs, and the rainfall does the rest — rhododendrons, camellias and magnolias all do well here.
The National Botanic Garden of Wales, in the old Middleton Hall estate near Llanarthne, is built round Norman Foster's Great Glasshouse, the largest single-span glasshouse of its kind, planted with flora from the world's Mediterranean climates. Aberglasney, a few miles away, was rescued from near-ruin in the 1990s and has an Elizabethan cloister garden and the Ninfarium, where sub-tropical planting fills the shell of the old mansion courtyard.
On the estate side, our garden tours have included Tredegar House near Newport, a red-brick house of the Restoration period, and Picton Castle's walled and woodland gardens in Pembrokeshire. Several days combine a garden with a heritage railway, such as the Gwili line north of Carmarthen.
Mid Wales, Hay-on-Wye and the Borders
Mid Wales is the emptiest part of the country and the least visited. Llandrindod Wells grew from a farming settlement into a Victorian spa when the railway arrived, and the wide streets, ironwork and Rock Park springs are still there to be walked; the Radnorshire Museum tells the rest of the story.
Eastwards, Hay-on-Wye turned itself into a town of secondhand bookshops from the 1960s onwards, and the festival it now hosts at the end of May draws writers and readers for ten days. There is a smaller Winter Weekend in late November, which is when Hay is at its most sociable.
South of here the ground rises into Bannau Brycheiniog, the Brecon Beacons, where Pen y Fan at 886 metres is the highest point in southern Britain. The Royal Mint at Llantrisant, which strikes coins for dozens of countries, appears on several of our itineraries in this part of Wales.
