Llantwit Major

The inns around the square

Three pubs face each other across the old town square, where the War Memorial now stands: the Old Swan Inn, the Old White Hart and the Tudor Tavern, once the Globe. They are what remains of the inns that used to cluster in the compact centre, a maze of narrow lanes, old stone and independent shops — vintage stores, gift shops, a bakery on Church Street — that you can walk end to end in a few minutes.

The Old Swan claims to be the oldest pub in town, and the building behind the beer garden dates to the 12th century, some 800 years of oak beams and open fire. The kitchen changes its chalkboard daily and sources meat, fish and bread locally, with wild garlic and herbs foraged nearby. You might find Welsh rarebit with crispy bacon at £6.50, mushroom and paprika risotto at £10, or rack of lamb at £17; three courses come to around £25 a head. Across the square, the Old White Hart keeps three ales, a large log burner in the public bar and an enclosed garden a stone's throw from the church, where George the landlord runs music nights and small beer festivals. The Tudor Tavern became a pub in the 1840s, having been a house for centuries before; two of its early-1900s owners are remembered for keeping a monkey and a parrot. The Roost, more contemporary, has five en-suite rooms if you want to stay above the bar.

Farm provisions and Celtic stones

For provisions, Farmers Pantry Butchers has run out of Rosedew Farm since 2012, open Monday to Saturday.

St Illtyd's dominates the centre, and it earns the attention. It is really two churches built end to end — a Norman parish chapel and a 13th-century monastic one, joined through a central wall — and it holds the finest collection of Celtic crosses in Wales outside the National Museum, among them the Houelt Cross and the towering Samson Pillar. The carved stones have earned it the name "the Westminster Abbey of Wales." The Galilee Chapel, ruined for nearly four centuries after the Dissolution, reopened in 2013 after an £850,000 restoration and now houses the stones. The church stands on the site of St Illtud's monastic college, a centre of Celtic learning where tradition holds that St David studied, destroyed by Viking raiders in 987 and finally dissolved in 1539.

Down the Colhuw valley

The town sits inland; the coast is a short walk down the wooded Colhuw valley to Cwm Colhuw beach, where near-vertical Jurassic cliffs meet the Bristol Channel. A circular of about nine miles takes in the cliffs, the beach and an Iron Age hill fort, and the coast path continues west past Monknash to the clifftop lighthouse at Nash Point. The beach is a nature reserve, home to the Small Blue, Britain's smallest butterfly; dogs are turned away from May to the end of September.

Rail, recreation and the Blood & Blacks

The station reopened in 2005, with trains to Cardiff Central roughly every twenty minutes. On a summer afternoon the recreation ground fills for a fete, and the rugby club, the Blood & Blacks, play on at Boverton Road as they have since 1889.