Bell tents in Cardigan Bay

Ceredigion boasts the lion’s share of Cardigan Bay—a stretch running from Cardigan to Aberaeron and Aberystwyth up to the Dyfi Estuary. The area is plastered in campsites, with the New Quay area and the coast north of Aberystwyth offering especially good choices. Great hiking can be found along the Wales Coast Path, which takes campers via comely harbours like New Quay with its bottlenose dolphin-watching trips, an abundance of idyllic sandy coves, and rolling dunes around the Dyfi Estuary.

Cardigan Bay’s northern portion is flanked by Snowdonia National Park, where the sandy, castle-studded seaboard jostles for position with the jagged mountain peaks and emerald-green valleys behind. The shores then swerve west for 30 miles out onto the lower-lying Llyn Peninsula AONB. Many of North Wales’ best beaches hem this coast, and among many excellent pitching places, the dune-rimmed coast around Morfa Harlech and Morfa Dyffryn stands out.

Bare yellow-green hills scored by narrow wooded valleys loom inland above Cardigan Bay. Although never surpassing 2,475 feet, these are mighty wild places that cross by Wales’ toughest long-distance trail, the Cambrian Way. This, Britain’s remotest land south of the Scottish Highlands, is most easily accessed from Aberystwyth to the northwest. There are scarcely any campsites in the middle, so places like Aberystwyth, Tregaron, and Lampeter on the western periphery are your best options for camping bases.