My wife and I are planning to spend three weeks in Wales in September/October. We are 72 years old so not interested in surfing or so-called adventure tourism. While I love walking my wife’s health doesn’t allow her long or too strenuous walks.
I am not really interested in cities so will probably avoid Cardiff and even Swansea. While we are interested to see a few castles, grand houses etc, we are particularly interested in small towns and villages, whether coastal fishing villages or rural hamlets, and more off the tourist trail places. I know it sounds ridiculous, and to a large extent it is, especially in just 3 weeks, but we would like to see the Wales that exists beneath the tourism veneer. We are both retired historians and keen photographers but our interest lies more with the ‘common’ people than the rich and famous.
We will have a car and my initial inclination is to stay for about 4 nights in each of 5 locations, thinking that the drives between these bases together with day trips from them should enable us to experience a fair bit.
We will fly in to Heathrow, arriving about lunch time so my thought is to pick up the car there and drive to somewhere like Chepstow for the first night - not thought of as one of our 5 bases. From there I thought we could take a broad anti-clockwise direction up through Brecon Beacons (possibly our first base) to North Wales and Anglesey before heading south (along the coast perhaps) to a final base in the south-west. From there we would head direct back to Heathrow.
While I am wading through guidebooks it would be great to hear from anyone with advice as to whether this sounds like a reasonable plan and, more importantly, any suggestions as to where we should make our 5 bases.
Thanks in advance, Paul