A visit to Aberystwyth for Telegraph Journey as a part of their summer time seaside sequence.
I spent a few days within the Mid Wales resort to search out out extra about regeneration and the uniquely quirky appeal of Aber.
Right here’s a pattern from the characteristic:
It was a hub of lead-mining and shipbuilding. The city boomed with genteel Victorians, taking the seaside air, turning it into the Biarritz of Wales. And, extra not too long ago, it offered the backdrop to a genre-defying Welsh noir.
The idiosyncratic seaside resort of Aberystwyth, Aber to the locals, pivots round its Norman citadel with twin seashores — but maintains an remoted air given its westerly place on Cardigan Bay.
Proudly Welsh talking, it’s now house to the Nationwide Library of Wales, the nation’s largest Arts Centre and bolstered by a full of life scholar inhabitants throughout college time period instances.
However there’s additionally an air of light grandeur with a few of the pastel-coloured Victorian and Edwardian resort lodges in determined want of some love.
The arrival of the railway within the 1860s reworked the city’s fortunes, establishing a thriving coastal resort, the opening of the Royal Pier, the primary in Wales, quickly following.
There are inexperienced shoots of regeneration, too. The primary section of the wave-crashed promenade’s £10.8m facelift is nearly full.
The renaissance of the Previous Faculty, the grand outdated Victorian constructing that served first as the primary house of the College of Wales, goals for 2027 completion with a brand new cultural centre and four-star lodge.
Learn the total characteristic by way of Telegraph Journey, How Aberystwyth plans to revive the glory days of the British seaside.
Preferred this? Attempt additionally: A tour of south Wales to mark the centenary of the scren idol Richard Burton.