Welsh heritage: Sightseeing tours

In this tour, West Wales specialist Marion Davies will show you the heritage rich Teifi Valley. Visit Cardigan, an elegant, largely Welsh speaking town with a dramatic Norman Castle, and Cenarth, home to the National Coracle Centre and a 17th century mill. You’ll also go to the National Wool Museum in Drefach Felindre, a village which used to produce blankets, shirts and socks by the cartload.

Distilling centuries of history into a two day tour, Celticos will show you the best of Celtic, Roman and medieval North Wales and introduce you to the story of the Princes of Gwynedd. This fascinating route covers over a dozen castles, forts and burial chambers in Snowdonia and Anglesey, including Conwy and Caernarfon, Segontium and Dolbadarn.

Created by local Dylan Thomas enthusiast Bob Stevens, this is a two mile self guided walk around Laugharne’s inspiring landscapes, marked by benches engraved with lines of the great man’s poetry. The name is a reference to Poem in October, one of Dylan’s best loved poems, describing a walk on his 30th birthday. Follow the route on your own birthday, and local businesses will offer you treats on the house.

If you were born into a family with Welsh roots, but have never visited the places where your ancestors lived, Celticos can help. They will connect you with specialist genealogical researchers who will piece together your family tree and plan a tour of the places where your forefathers were born, married or buried, and sites where they farmed or mined. Welsh-American family links are a speciality.

In November 1839, John Frost led a group of passionate political activists, many of them coal-miners, in a march on the town of Newport. The aim of the Chartists was to demand the kind of democratic freedoms we now largely take for granted. Phil Coates will guide you to historic industrial sites in The Valleys, the Wye Valley and the Vale of Usk which tell the full story.

Starting in Cardiff, this day takes you into the former heart of industrial South Wales, the Blaenavon World Heritage Site, to visit Big Pit, the National Coal Museum, for a fascinating tour led by a former miner. From there, it’s on to discover another great Welsh product, real ale, at the nearby Rhymney Brewery. The day ends in the food-focused market town of Abergavenny.

Welsh-speaking Blue Badge Guide Huw Davies was born and bred in Ceredigion. On this day out, he takes you from Aberystwyth into the Cambrian Mountains, where lead was mined in the 18th and 19th centuries, for an underground tour. You’ll also visit at least one of the stately mansions built by wealthy industrialists during the Victorian era.

The lower Tawe Valley, where the Tawe flows south towards Swansea Bay, was a hive of copper, coal, lead, nickel and porcelain production in the 18th and 19th centuries. At one time, over 90 per cent of the world’s copper came from Swansea. Take a short heritage cruise on the Tawe with the Swansea Community Boat Trust, and you’ll learn about the river’s role in Welsh history.

On this tour by See Wales, you’ll see priceless Roman jewels retrieved from a drain, an abbey that inspired Turner and Wordsworth and one of the finest late-medieval fortresses in Britain. You’ll start in Caerleon, where you can visit the Roman amphitheatre, bathhouse and museum, then head east to the romantic ruins of Tintern Abbey and north to Raglan Castle.

North Wales expert Amanda Whitehead, a Blue Badge Guide, will take you right back to the 7th century in this tour of historic sites with connections to kings, princes and princesses of Wales, England and France. Amanda also offers a two-day Pilgrims Way tour of holy sites in Flintshire, Snowdonia and the Llŷn Peninsula.

With Planet Wales, the story of Wales can be as short and sweet or as long and involved as you like. They will tailor a guided tour of our most absorbing heritage sites lasting anything from a day to several days, according to your interests. A qualified historian will tell you about the people who shaped the land and show you why Wales has more castles per square mile than any other country on earth.

Keen to hear the echoes of your family’s past in Wales? Dragon Tours can help you unearth details of Welsh ancestors in libraries, record offices and public archives by enlisting the help of a local genealogy expert. They will then plan a tour which takes you to places of interest in the regions where your family used to live.