Holiday to Drefach Felindre, Wales!

So excited to be on our way to Wales for a holiday with some of my family – it’s a bank holiday weekend and the weather is going to be great!

I’ll update this post when we arrive!

Five hours later and we had arrived at our home for the next week!

Our Airbnb holiday home in Drefach Felindre is lovely, it’s a converted stone barn, with 3 bedrooms, two bathrooms, living room & kitchen diner (plus utility room, conservatory & downstairs toilet) – plenty of room for our party of nine! Outside, there’s a patio area with seating, huge fish pond & a sloping meadow area with a narrow, shallow river at the bottom.

The weather has been hot, very hot, so we’ve been grateful that the thick stone walls have kept the house cool.

We’ve been out and about exploring the area, including a walk at Cenarth Falls & a visit to the National Coracle Centre also in Cenarth. The museum is well worth a visit, the owner is very knowledgable, and gives a very informative and well presented talk in a way that the younger members of our group understood and they were encouraged to sit in a coracle (on land!) and pretend to paddle it. We also visited the 17th century mill on the site, which is currently being restored.

The village we’re staying in is home to the National Wool Museum, so of course, we’ve paid a visit to that too – it may sound a bit dull, but it’s actually very interesting. From fleece to woollen fabric, the process is explained with lots of interactivity along the way, and the opportunity to see some of the machinery in action.

One of the working looms at the National Wool Museum – we saw this one in action!

No holiday, in our opinion, is complete without a trip to the beach! We took a picnic lunch to Poppit Sands, just outside Cardigan, which is a vast sandy beach backed by dunes, plenty of space to build huge sandcastles or forts (known as ‘great works’ by my grandsons). Despite our best efforts, the great works succumbed to the tide eventually but it held up well for a while!

We spent a day in New Quay (that’s not Newquay in Cornwall) where we took a one hour boat trip with Sea Mor Boat trips to try to spot some dolphins. Unfortunately the dolphins weren’t very obliging but the boat trip itself was fun and we did see lots of sea birds.

After the boat trip we all fancied traditional seaside grub – fish & chips! We ate at The Lime Crab which, offers some slightly less traditional meals too for those who are more adventurous! I had cod & chips and it was the best fish & chips I’d had in a long time, the cod was very white and flaky with light, crispy batter and the chips were just as seaside chips should be, neither too crispy nor too greasy. The Limb Crab has a very small seating area outside where we were able to eat our delicious food accompanied by a small alchoholic beverage (chardonnay in a chilled glass for me and cider for Mr Fixit). Perfect!

Next day, Mr Fixit and I escaped for a few hours and decided to have a little trip on the Teifi Valley Railway. The railway is 2 foot narrow gauge line, created from a branch line of the Great Western Railway and was built back in the late 19th century to transport goods and passengers through the West Wales valleys. The trip starts at Henllan and takes you along the line to Pontprenshitw (translated as Bridge (Pont) Wood (Pren) Shaky (Sitoo) = Shaky Wooden Bridge) where you hop off and walk down to the waterfall & look up at the bridge across the gorge built to replace the orginal shaky wooden bridge.

Included in the train ride price (a very reasonable £6) is a ride through a wooded area on the Pixie Train! I loved this! How I wish I had a huge garden so I create something similar (minus the train).

Mr Fixit and I were feeling quite hungry at this point so we decided to drive to the nearby market town of Newcastle Emlyn for a bite to eat. Harrison’s Brasserie looked inviting with the choice of eating inside the cafe or outside in the riverside garden. We chose to eat inside, which was very pleasant, I had a delicious Cheese & Ham Paninini, the seeded flatbread was lovely, and Mr Fixit had the Club Sandwich with Fries, which was also very tasty.

After lunch, we went for a short walk to the castle where legend has it, the last Welsh dragon was killed. The experience was a little spoilt by some lads smoking weed behind the ‘new dragon’ – we didn’t feel comfortable having a proper wander round, so headed back to the car.

Another day, another beach, this time we spent some a few hours at Penbryn Beach, which is managed by the National Trust. It’s a lovely wide sandy beach, however, be warned that the hill down to the beach is quite steep and that the return to the car park the hill feels much steeper! There is a drop off point at the bottom of the beach which is useful to offload small children, buckets & spades, beach tents etc (with a responsible adult, of course!) before parking. The cafe and toilets are at the top of the hill in the main car park, so make use of the facilities before going down to the beach! As it’s maintained by the National Trust, it was a little disappointing to find that the toilets weren’t very pleasant, apparently both gents urinals were blocked and the ladies had no loo roll! The plus side was that the parking machine also hadn’t been maintained and wasn’t working so parking (usually £6 per day for non NT members) was free.

As this was our last night, before heading back to our Airbnb, we went to Cardigan to have pizza at Grain next to the river. Whilst the pizza was good, the menu was somewhat limited, I really fancied a veggie pizza but the only options were a mushroom pizza or a tomato pizza from the daily specials board, neither of which I’m a fan of, so I opted for a Y Ddraig Goch (Margherita) which was a little bland. I also ordered Crispy Cauliflower Bites as a side which were very tasty but at £12, I felt they were overpriced. Mr Fixit ordered a pepperoni pizza as did my grandson, but the pepperoni was a little on the spicy side for young children. Great location and very informal dining.

We headed home next day, roll on the next break!