The south-east inner tower of Caerphilly Castle leans ten degrees out of true, about fifteen metres of stone tilting over the moat from subsidence or a Civil War attempt to blow it up. Cadw calls it "Wales's very own Leaning Tower — even wonkier than that of Pisa," and it is the thing most people photograph first. The castle behind it covers roughly thirty acres, ringed by artificial lakes and dams, which makes it the largest in Wales and the second largest in Britain after Windsor. Gilbert de Clare began it in 1268 and introduced concentric defences to the country in the process. It was burned, besieged and, eventually, restored by the Marquesses of Bute, who reroofed it and gave it to the state in 1950.
You can look straight down onto the moat from the garden of the Courthouse, a Grade II listed pub on Cardiff Road that dates to around 1320. It was built as a purpose-built court after a Welsh attack destroyed the old one in the castle gatehouse in 1316. Good-value meals run most of the day, with traditional Sunday roasts served inside or out over the water. For something plainer, the Malcolm Uphill is the town-centre Wetherspoon, named after the Caerphilly motorcycle racer who was the first man to lap the Isle of Man TT course at 100mph; it makes the Good Beer Guide for its real ale. Project Caerphilly, a short walk from the castle, is a craft taproom and bottle shop, and the Black Cock Inn sits up on the mountain above the town.
The cheese is not a marketing exercise. Castle Dairies still makes Caerphilly in the town using pre-war hand techniques, and the cheese itself — pale, crumbly, with what its makers describe as a tang of lemon — began as a moist curd made on local farms to feed coal miners underground. The salt content and the way it holds a wedge without drying out suited a shift below ground. It carries European PGI status now, and the town throws the Big Cheese Festival around the castle each year, an event that pulled 80,000 people in 2012.
Caerphilly Mountain rises to 271 metres on the southern edge of the coalfield, open common land with wide views back toward Cardiff. A snack bar has stood up there since 1957, rebuilt in 2011 with solar panels and rainwater-flushed toilets. The climb turns up often enough in the Tour of Britain, which took it twice in a single day in 2012 and 2013.
Trains from Caerphilly station reach Cardiff Queen Street in about thirteen minutes on the Rhymney Line, and the bus interchange sits alongside the platforms.
The comedian Tommy Cooper was born here in 1921 and moved away aged three because of the air. A nine-foot bronze of him, fez and all, was unveiled in 2008 by Anthony Hopkins, and it stands looking out over the castle he was too young to remember.