Things to do in Wales for free

Secreted away between The Hayes and St Mary Street and High Street in Cardiff are some half a dozen renovated arcades, a series of Victorian and Edwardian galleries where you’ll find many alluring little independent shops. Particularly impressive are the High Street and Castle arcades, packed with great clothes shops, quirky gift stores and a range of esoteric emporia where you can pick up fliers for clubs and events. A few yards further down towards Central Station is the elegant Edwardian indoor market and further still the Royal and Morgan arcades, linking St Mary Street with the lower end of The Hayes.

Chepstow is the starting point for three of Wales’ most popular long-distance walks: the famous Offa’s Dyke Path, the Wye Valley Walk, and the Wales Coast Path; this path begins in Riverside Gardens, near the Old Wye Bridge, before cutting inland across fields and then meeting up with the Severn estuary. Guides and maps for all three paths can be obtained from the tourist office.

Swansea’s old South Dock features the enticingly old-fashioned Swansea Museum, whose highlight is the Cabinet of Curiosities, a roomful of glass cases stuffed with everything from offbeat household items and memento mori - miniature shrines containing photos and models of the deceased - to intriguing local photos, including several of Winston Churchill during his visit to Swansea in World War II. There’s also a marble bust of a Gower boy, Edgar Evans, who perished with Scott in Antarctica in 1912. This is one of the best free things to do in Wales for any history buffs.

Fourteen miles north of Newport, the valley of the Llwyd opens out at the airy iron and coal town of Blaenavon, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A spirited and evocative place, its population today stands at around five thousand, a third of its size in the nineteenth century. Head to the Blaenavon Ironworks while you’re here. Limestone, coal and iron ore - ingredients for successful iron-smelting - were abundant locally, and the Blaenavon works was one of the largest in Britain until it closed in 1900. This remarkable site contains three of the five original Georgian blast furnaces, one with its cast house still attached, and the immense water-balance lift. Also here are the workers’ cottages, some unchanged and others converted into a museum offering a thorough picture of the process and the lifestyle that went with it.

St Davids (Tyddewi) is one of the most enchanting spots in Britain. This miniature city - really just a large village - sits at Wales’ very westernmost point in bleak, treeless countryside, above its purple- and gold-flecked cathedral, the country’s spiritual heart. Supposedly founded by the Welsh patron saint himself in 550 AD, the shrine of St David has drawn pilgrims for a millennium and a half - William the Conqueror included - and by 1120, Pope Calixtus II decreed that two journeys to St Davids were the spiritual equivalent of one to Rome. Today, with so many historical sites, outdoor-pursuit centres, surf beaches, superb walks, bathing and climbing, St Davids Cathedral and its peninsula are a must-visit.

The Pembrokeshire Coast is Britain’s only predominantly sea-based national park, hugging the rippled coast around the entire southwestern section of Wales. Established in 1952, the park is not one easily identifiable mass, rather a series of occasionally unconnected coastal and inland scenic patches. Following almost every wriggle of the coastline, the Pembrokeshire Coast Path winds 186 miles from Amroth, just east of Tenby, to its northern terminus at St Dogmael’s near Cardigan. Enjoying the Pembrokeshire Coast is one of the most rewarding free things to do in Wales.