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Inland the Rheidol valley climbs twelve miles to Devil's Bridge, where three bridges stand stacked one above another over a gorge with a waterfall dropping through it.

North of the town the sand runs flat and wide at Borth and Ynyslas. At low tide a drowned forest of oak and pine stumps shows through it, thousands of years old.

The steam train that leaves from beside the main station in Aberystwyth was not built for holidaymakers at all.

The Vale of Rheidol Railway opened to the public on 22 December 1902, laid to a narrow gauge of one foot eleven and three-quarter inches, a shade under two feet. Its job was to bring lead and zinc ore down from the mines in the hills, along with timber from the valley woods.

Mining in these valleys is very old, and it had boomed through the nineteenth century. By the time the line opened the ore was already running out. The mines closed one after another, and the railway was left carrying visitors instead.

That turned out to be the saving of it. The Great Western Railway took it over in the 1920s and built new engines for it, and those same locomotives are still working the line.

It climbs just under twelve miles from sea level to Devil's Bridge, and the run takes about an hour each way through oak woods on the side of the valley.

At the top, three bridges stand stacked one directly above another over a narrow gorge, the lowest of them medieval. A stepped path drops down beside the Mynach falls, and it is a stiff climb back up.

The valleys inland are worth a whole day rather than an afternoon. The kite feed at Bwlch Nant yr Arian is on the same road, ten miles out on the A44. The climb back up from the falls is not something to rush before a train home.

The mines the railway was built for have left a landscape of their own. There are ruined engine houses and grey spoil tips around Cwmystwyth and Ponterwyd, and the open hills above them are crossed by tracks. Keep children and dogs on the paths rather than the tips: the waste is full of lead.

North of the town, Borth and Ynyslas give you two miles of flat sand and dunes at the mouth of the Dyfi. The sand runs a long way out and the tide comes back across it quickly, so keep an eye on it.

Aberystwyth has the shopping and the food for a self-catering week. There is a covered market in the middle of town, and fish landed by local boats is cooked at Pysgoty on the South Promenade.

The town stays awake out of season, which matters in spring or autumn. The university keeps the kitchens, cinemas and bars going when much of the Welsh coast has shut for the winter.