Cilgerran

Coracles and the Castle

Every August, people race coracles down the River Teifi at Cilgerran, in the same round leather-and-lath boats the salmon fishermen used here for centuries. The races have run since 1950, part of Cilgerran Festive Week, and entrants have turned up from as far as the United States to paddle a one-man craft that looks like an upturned walnut shell. One local, Bernard Thomas, took his across the English Channel in 1974. It took him about thirteen and a half hours.

The village sits on the south bank of the Teifi, high over a wooded gorge, with the castle ruins on a crag above the water. Cilgerran Castle is free to walk around — National Trust and Cadw between them — and Turner painted it, which tells you the ruins had already reached the atmospheric stage by the early nineteenth century. It was raised in stone from 1223 by William Marshal the younger, Earl of Pembroke, on the site of an earlier castle, and had gone to ruin by 1400.

Three Historic Pubs

The Pendre Inn stands at the heart of it all, near the castle and the gorge. It is a 14th-century pub, Grade II listed, with a public bar leading through to a lounge and a separate restaurant. Home-cooked food is served from noon to eight every day; reviewers call it "beautifully cooked and presented." The regular ale is BB, with up to two rotating guests and real cider often on. Louise handles the food. Families and dogs are both welcome.

There are two more listed pubs. The Cardiff Arms is 19th-century. The Masons Arms, over in nearby Cnwce and known to everyone as the Ramp Inn, has been described as "a proper, unpretentious, welcoming pub that serves good beer," which is about all you can ask of a village local.

Village Essentials and Gorge Walks

The village shop and post office sit at the junction of the road that drops down to the river car park. Nearby, a Coracle Information Centre keeps the fishing tradition on record.

The walking is the reason to come. The Cilgerran Gorge Circular runs from a viewpoint over the river, through ancient woodland and past a disused slate quarry. The Cardi Bach path follows the old Whitland and Cardigan Railway trackbed — the line closed in 1962 — past salmon traps, a quarry and an abandoned ferryman's cottage. The riverside path itself, one description notes, "has been used by coraclemen for centuries – and they still walk it at night, in pitch-darkness, carrying their boats on their backs."

Marsh Wildlife and St Llawddog

Below the village is the Welsh Wildlife Centre and the Teifi Marshes reserve, free to enter, with six bird hides, four nature trails and a Glasshouse Café looking out over the marsh. Otters, kingfishers and, if you are patient, sika and red deer.

St Llawddog's church is Grade II* listed, its 15th-century tower medieval, the rest rebuilt in the 1850s. In the churchyard stands the Trenegussus Stone, inscribed in both Latin and Ogham.

Cardigan Links and Slate

There is no station. Cardigan is three miles north, ten minutes by car or on the 430 bus, and the slate that once employed five hundred men here closed for good in 1936. The quarry cliffs have gone quietly back to birch.