Crymych

Crymych is a working village on the A478 at the eastern end of the Preseli Hills, and it is the place to understand that Pembrokeshire is not only a coastline. It grew around the railway and the livestock trade, and it remains a service centre — shops, a garage, a secondary school, a livestock market tradition — in one of the most robustly Welsh-speaking areas of Wales. Visitors are not catered for here in any obvious way, which is exactly why some people prefer it.

The hills are the attraction. From the lanes just west of the village you can walk onto Foel Drygarn, an Iron Age hillfort crowned with three Bronze Age cairns, and pick up the Golden Road — the ancient ridgeway that runs the length of the Preselis past Carn Menyn, where some of the Stonehenge bluestones were quarried, to Foel Cwmcerwyn, at 536 metres the highest point in Pembrokeshire. On a clear day the view from the ridge takes in Cardigan Bay, the Gower and, occasionally, Ireland and Snowdonia. In cloud it is featureless moorland where a map and compass matter.

As a holiday base this is upland, not coastal: expect rain, wind and sheep, and expect to drive twenty to thirty minutes to reach the sea at Newport or Poppit. Prices reflect that and are among the lowest in the county. Newport, Nevern and Pentre Ifan are fifteen to twenty minutes west; Cardigan twenty north; Narberth and the south coast about forty. For walkers, riders and anyone who wants dark skies and no queues, it is a genuine option.

Accommodation is mostly farmhouses, converted barns and small cottages scattered around the village and up the lanes towards the hills — space, parking, wood burners and very dark skies, generally at low cost. Village properties put shops and a fuel stop in walking distance, which matters more here than on the coast.

On the A478 between Cardigan and Narberth. The nearest railway station is Clunderwen on the West Wales line, about fifteen minutes south by car.