Honey sometimes seeps through the walls of Plas yn Rhiw. Around fifty thousand rare Welsh black honeybees live in the eaves of the manor, and when the National Trust re-roofed the house in 2024–25 with four thousand Penrhyn slates, the work was done around five swarms of them. The manor is the reason most people come to Y Rhiw, a small hamlet set high in the pass between Mynydd Rhiw and Mynydd y Graig, looking down over the four-mile sweep of Porth Neigwl.
The house has a tearoom, described by those who have been as very attractive, with tables out among the ornamental gardens and views across Cardigan Bay. It calls itself the only organic National Trust garden in Wales. There is no butcher, no shop, no deli here — the village is tiny, and provisions come from Aberdaron or Abersoch.
There is also no pub. The nearest are four miles west in Aberdaron. The Ship Hotel, or Gwesty'r Llong, stands a few metres from the beach and has been run by the Harrison family since 1982; it regularly serves award-winning crab and lobster landed locally. Tŷ Newydd sits right on the shore in the centre of the village, with a terrace over the sea and beers from local breweries.
What Y Rhiw has instead is the walking. Mynydd Rhiw itself is 304 metres — a short, steep climb from which, on a clear day, you can see Snowdonia, Cardigan Bay, the Pembrokeshire coast, and the Wicklow Mountains in Ireland. A quieter route drops down toward Porth Ysgo, a secluded cove reached by steps, where a waterfall called Pistyll y Gaseg, the mare's spout, runs best at mid-to-low tide after rain. Ruined manganese workings stand on the slopes above the beach.
The manganese is the local history. Ore was found in 1827, and the Benallt and Rhiw mines produced over 195,000 tons before they closed in 1945 — more than half of all the manganese Wales ever raised. An aerial ropeway once carried it over the growing village to a jetty on Porth Neigwl. Benallt Mine is the first place three mineral species were ever described, one of them named cymrite, for Wales.
The beach below is also called Hell's Mouth, and more than 140 shipwrecks are recorded there. It is one of the better-known surf beaches in Wales, though the rips are strong enough that it is really for stronger swimmers.
St Aelrhiw's church stands about a kilometre east, first recorded in 1254 and now disused. Its churchyard holds the graves of men washed ashore at Porth Neigwl. A hundred yards below it is Ffynnon Aelrhiw, a holy well roughly ten feet square with stone seats on three sides, one of the last places pilgrims heading for Bardsey Island could stop and see the sea again.
The Keating sisters bought Plas yn Rhiw in 1939, derelict, and had to climb in through a front window because brambles had blocked the door. When they handed it to the Trust, they set one condition: that the wild bees be left undisturbed.
