Welsh pubs with serious cwtch appeal

Set in the picturesque village of Llanfihangel y Creuddyn, around seven miles south of Aberystwyth, Y Ffarmers is a country pub known for its warm Welsh hospitality. The menu is full, with a range of homemade dishes, including of vegetarian and vegan options. Dogs are welcome too, and with a cosy interior, complete with a roaring fire, and a well-stocked bar offering craft beers, real ales, wines and gins, it’s a perfect spot to unwind after a countryside walk.

Voted CAMRA's North Wales pub of the year in 2014, 2015 and 2016, the listed 1920s Albion Ale House has rave reviews on TripAdvisor and is a serious beer drinkers' nirvana. The pleasing result of a collaboration of four Welsh craft breweries, (Purple Moose, Conwy, Nant, and Great Orme) the Albion is low on pretension and high on comfort and contentment. And when you've drunk that last drop, you'll have Britain's best-preserved walled town – the walls of the World Heritage site of Conwy – to explore.

You can't put together a list of Welsh pubs without referencing poet and playwright Dylan Thomas, so one of Thomas' favoured watering holes, Brown's Hotel, had to make the grade. It's said that Thomas befriended landlady Ivy Thomas, and she supplied him with stories and gossip, which ended up as source material for Under Milk Wood. But Thomas isn't the only famous patron of this Talacharn (Laugharne) pub. Over the decades U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole, Elizabeth Taylor, Patti Smith and Mick Jagger have all swung by for a pint. 

Within spitting distance of the Stackpole Estate, the Bosherston Lily Ponds and the heavenly Barafundle Bay and Broadhaven South beach, the picture-postcard perfect Stackpole Inn has got as many awards as it's got barrels. The good news is there's no need for a designated driver. Book yourself one of the beautifully serene bedrooms to complete the country pub idyll.

If you're looking for an eccentric night out then look no further than Bessies (aka The Dyffryn Arms). A 'pub' like no other, Bessies is a simple room in the front of a house that is the stuff of Welsh pub folklore legend. The beer is poured from a jug and tastes like proper ale should. You'll love it or hate it, but it will certainly be an experience.

Dating back to 1522 the Black Boy Inn is one of the oldest-surviving inns in North Wales and has been a mainstay of town life for almost 500 years. Sitting within the medieval walls of Caernarfon, a few hundred yards from Castell Caernarfon (Caernarfon Castle), the pub (which also has numerous rooms to stay in) has the kind of homely, old-school atmosphere (think nooks, crannies, beams, wood-burning stoves) you'd hope for from a pub that pulled its first pint when Henry VIII was on the throne.

It's been named as one of the best beach bars in the world and you can only reach it on foot. Or by boat. With USPs like that it's hardly surprising that the Tŷ Coch Inn on Pen Llŷn (Llŷn Peninsula) is rightly regarded as one of Wales' top public houses. The pub sits in the shadow of the Eryri National Park on National Trust-owned land overlooking the Irish Sea, so it's fair to say that it enjoys natural beauty in abundance, come rain or shine. In fact it's probably even better when the weather is atrocious, it all adds to that feeling of being ever so slightly marooned. 

It has the feel of somewhere truly ancient and smells like log fires; the 14th century Plough and Harrow is the very definition of a tumbledown country pub. The ceilings are low, the portions are hefty, and it's exactly the sort of place you want to spend a Sunday afternoon warming up after a ramble around the coast path discovering secret beaches.  

Pub fans with a taste for the noir should check out The Skirrid Mountain Inn, which dates back to at least 1100, placing it among the oldest pubs in the UK. In a previous life it served as a courtroom, where around 200 convicts were executed by hanging over the stairwell. It was also used by Welsh warrior prince Owain Glyndŵr as a rallying point for his men. As a result, tales of hauntings are commonplace. Fast forward a few hundred years and the atmosphere is warm and welcoming, the surroundings spectacular, and the menus and selection of real ales well worth getting goosebumps for.