Beauty of beacons makes travel guide’s ultimate list
TRAVEL guide publisher Lonely Planet has named South Wales tourist spots among the world’s most unmissable travel experiences.
St Fagans National History Museum in Cardiff is among seven of Wales’ top attractions, and 34 of the UK’s best travel experiences to make it onto Lonely Planet’s Ultimate Travel List.
Also making it onto the world list of 500 places is the breathtaking Wales Coast Path and the majestic rugged beauty of the Brecon Beacons.
The Coast Path, which traces the entire coastline of Wales with sections tracing the shorelines of Cardiff, the Vale of Glamorgan and Bridgend, is not only top of the Welsh experiences, it is the highest ranking new UK entry, straight in at No 82.
The travel experts describe the list as “500 most thrilling, memorable and interesting travel experiences in the world – ranked in order of brilliance.”
A spokeswoman for the publisher said: “We’ve all got a list of places that we want to see for ourselves: places friends have enthused about, places we’ve read about, dreamed about. This is our list.
“It is the second edition and contains over 200 new entries.
“With 34 UK experiences featured, it makes the UK home to more of the world’s best experiences than any other country.”
According to Lonely
Planet, the experiences and destinations are “a mix of knock-out new openings, sights that have upped their game, or places more relevant to the way we travel now”.
“We also changed the way we calculated the list,” says the vice president of publishing Piers Pickard. “For this edition we rewarded extra points to sights that are managing tourism sustainably.”
Of the Wales Coastal Path (ranked 82nd) the book says: “This little Celtic country’s biggest hit on our list is the long distance path that traces the entirety of its coastline, the 1,400km (870 mile) Wales Coast Path.
“As a result of its completion in 2012, linking up already successful trails such as the Pembrokeshire Coast Path and Anglesey Coast Path in one wondrous sea-hugging route, Wales became the world’s first country to have a walking trail all along its coast.
“Highlights on such a breathtaking trek are harder to pick than the path is to walk.
“But Wales is a candidate for the most densely castled place on earth, with fortresses standing sentinel along a seaboard featuring some of the most beautiful beaches and cliff scenery anywhere.”
Ranking the Brecon Beacons at 153rd, the book notes: “With its hundreds of square kilometres of beguiling peaks and moors and a Unesco World Heritage site (the ironworks town of Blaenavon), the rugged landscape of Wales’ Brecon Beacons
National Park may look wild, but it has been shaped by 8,000 years of human settlement.
“Outdoor-lovers may just as likely chance upon Roman burial chambers and medieval castles as on waterfalls and caves.
“In its market towns, buzzing events such as the Hay Festival of Literature and Arts promise to continue the Brecon Beacons’ rich cultural legacy.”
And praising St Fagans National History Museum, Cardiff, at 437th, the book says: “For a lesson in Welshness, St Fagans provides a microcosm of life in Wales like no other.
“Boring history lesson this is not. “In this living museum of more than 40 original buildings, you can sneak inside still-smoke-scented 16thcentury farmhouses, time-travel through miners’ cottages, marvel at an ancient church moved here stone by stone and behold the reconstructed 12th-century court of Welsh titan Llywelyn the Great.
“The display is anchored by a medieval castle worthy of its eclectic dominion.”
The other Welsh entries to make the list included Snowdonia, described as brimming with “beauty and myth”, North Wales’ Italiante village of Portmeirion which was said to be both “captivating and slightly unnerving”, and the cultural attractions of the Festiniog and Welsh Highland Railway, and St David’s Cathedral.
Lonely Planet’s Ultimate Travel List 2 is priced £19.99 and available from shop.lonelyplanet.com