The Golden Lion, Newport

The Golden Lion has been putting travellers up since it opened as a coach house in the 1600s, and it's the more polished of Newport's two inns: beamed ceilings and polished floors, an open fire, a bright garden room, a summer marquee, and thirteen individually decorated en-suite bedrooms with Melin Tregwynt wool and Myddfai toiletries. Ground-floor rooms take dogs for a small supplement, and dogs are welcome in the bar and garden.

Food runs lunch (noon to 2.30) and dinner (six to 8.45) every day, with a Sunday roast. The regulars are a gourmet burger and a coriander tempura haddock — £18.50 and £19.50 when we checked (September 2026) — alongside a Welsh rib-eye and seasonal specials that move with what's available locally; Sunday lunch was £23 for the roast beef. The bar keeps local and national beers, and live music is a fixture on the calendar.

The pub's own access statement is refreshingly plain: level access from the street to the front, but the doorways there are narrow and there's no wheelchair route into the bar; the restaurant at the rear has level access and there's an accessible toilet. Traeth Mawr — Newport Sands — is a short walk, and the Coast Path passes yards away. Book a table or a room online.