Introduction

I've explored Wales many times now — from colourful beach towns like Tenby, to the striking coastal landscapes around Harlech, the peaks of Eryri National Park, and the impressive Conwy Castle, there is much to experience across the whole of the country. Weaving in stops to explore the places your Welsh ancestors lived and knew brings a whole other dimension to the travel experience.

Seven Day Exploration

For this specific itinerary, the objective was to combine a delightful seven day driving route across the whole of Wales with ancestral stops across three branches of one family tree. Research revealed that three branches of the family had come from different parts of Wales at different times in the mid-1800s, before settling in America — where they were joined by marriage, far from the homes they'd left behind across the Atlantic.

The route blended heritage stops with the many treasures of Wales. Alongside planning the route, proposing timings for each day, and suggesting hotels, pubs, and restaurants along the way, I provided rigorously researched family and general history narratives for each stop on the Williams, Jones, and Edwards families' heritage trail.

The full itinerary also featured two of Wales's most striking natural landscapes: Bannau Brycheiniog and Eryri. Bannau Brycheiniog — the Brecon Beacons, in south Wales — is a land of rolling moorland, waterfalls, and wildflower-strewn trails, crowned by Pen y Fan, the highest peak in southern Britain. It's also a designated Dark Sky Reserve, so on a clear night the stargazing rivals the walking. Eryri, in the north, is Wales's largest national park and home to Snowdon, the country's highest mountain — a dramatic landscape of glacial valleys and sky-scraping peaks, with a character all its own, shaped by the volcanic rock beneath it. Together, the two parks offer a real sense of the range of Welsh scenery, from gentle uplands to genuine mountain grandeur.

This itinerary shared with the permission of the family.