Cardigan

Jeans and the Tidal Teifi

There is a wall in Cardigan that reads "our town is making jeans again." It belongs to the Hiut Denim Company, which set up in 2012 in a town that had lost its Marks & Spencer jeans factory a decade earlier — 35,000 pairs a week, 400 jobs, gone to Morocco in 2002. Hiut hired back some of the same machinists. In 2018 Meghan Markle wore a pair on a royal visit and the world briefly paid attention to a small Welsh town on the Teifi.

The river is the thing you keep coming back to. Cardigan sits on the tidal Teifi, which reaches the sea about three miles northwest, and the water shapes the whole place. On Cambrian Quay you'll find Pizzatipi, a wood-fired pizza operation on the riverside, with a bar attached called Tafarn Smwglin pouring beer from the local Mantle Brewery. Mantle is a family-run microbrewery in the town, and its ales turn up across the better pubs here.

A Town of Old Inns

Of which there are several. The Black Lion on the High Street claims to be the oldest coaching inn in Wales, dating from 1105, with three separate rooms — a restaurant, a coffee room and a traditional bar. The Grosvenor sits near the castle with river views, an outdoor patio, and good-value food served lunchtimes and evenings. The Red Lion, refurbished in 2015, keeps a couple of changing real ales and the sports channels. The Bell has been licensed since 1850 and once had its own brew house. If you want somewhere the locals drink, that's the Saddlers Arms.

Bakeries, Small Plates and the Market

For eating, Crwst is the name people say first — a bakery, café and deli run by a young local couple, known for doughnuts filled past the point of reason and a good brunch. Bara Menyn have been called the sourdough kings in Cardigan. Yr Hen Printworks does small plates of local produce inside a former stone chapel. And the Guildhall Market on Pendre packs over fifty independent stalls across two floors of a building that opened in 1860 and is said to be Britain's first civic building in the Gothic style; it's open nine to five, Monday to Saturday.

Castle, Port and Railway

Cardigan Castle, restored and reopened in 2015, is where the Lord Rhys held the first recorded eisteddfod in 1176 — the event now regarded as the origin of the National Eisteddfod, with contestants from all over the British Isles. Control of the town changed hands sixteen times between Welsh and English forces. In the early 1800s this was one of Britain's largest ports: by 1815 it had 314 registered ships, seven times as many vessels as Cardiff. The railway arrived in 1886 and, oddly, hastened the port's decline. The line closed to passengers in 1962, so you'll come by road — the A487 along the coast, the A484 toward Carmarthen — and buses link the nearby towns.

Following the Estuary

The walking is estuary walking. The Teifi Valley Trail runs about six miles up to Cilgerran and its twin-towered castle, past the Welsh Wildlife Centre. West of town the Pembrokeshire Coast Path begins at St Dogmaels and heads for the dunes at Poppit Sands. North lies Mwnt, a sheltered cove with a fourteenth-century church, and one of the better places in Britain to watch for dolphins.