Welsh heritage: sightseeing tours

In the Cenarth, Cardigan and National Wool Museum 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 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, 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 Thomas’ best loved poems, describing a walk on his 30th birthday. Follow the Dylan Thomas Birthday Walk 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, you could try tracing your family ancestry on a genealogy tour of Wales. A selection of tour companies can connect you with specialist genealogical researchers who will piece together your family tree and plan bespoke tours of the places where your forefathers were born, married or buried, and sites where they farmed or mined. 

In November 1839, John Frost led a group of passionate political activists, many of them coal-miners, on a march in 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 South Wales Valleys, the Wye Valley and the Vale of Usk to tell the full story.

Starting in Cardiff, the Sightseeing tour of Mountains, Mines and Ale in Wales (Roam Wales (telephone 07486 279815), with begins with a journey to the former heart of industrial South Wales: the Blaenavon World Heritage Site. Here, you'll visit Big Pit, the National Coal Museum, for a fascinating tour led by a former miner. From there, a drive through the mountains takes you on to discover another great Welsh product – real ale – at the nearby Rhymney Brewery. The day ends in the foodie market town of Abergavenny.

The lower Tawe Valley, where the River 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 the Wye Valley 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 and bathhouse, then head east to the romantic ruins of Tintern Abbey and north to Raglan Castle.

Take the strain off your feet with a tour aboard the City Sightseeing bus. Multiple buses circle the city every 30 minutes, with audio commentary as the bus drives from one site to another. You can hop on and off as you wish, which is useful if you want to explore some of the points in more detail. Stops include Cardiff Castle, National Museum Cardiff, the Wales Millennium Centre, Techniquest, St David’s Dewi Sant and Principality Stadium.

North Wales expert Amanda Whitehead, a Blue Badge Guide, will take you back in time with her tours of Conwy town and castle or Medieval town walls. Amanda also offers an eight to nine hours Celts and castles bus tour. Explore Anglesey, Caernarfon, Dolbadarn Castle and Snowdonia in a luxury bus or van.