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Walking the full length of the front and kicking the bar at the far end is an old local habit, and visitors join in.

Behind the town the Rheidol valley runs inland towards Devil's Bridge, and the Cambrian Mountains begin almost at once. Aberystwyth Beer Festival runs across eight venues in the town centre from 21 to 23 August 2026.

Constitution Hill rises 430 feet straight off the northern end of the promenade, and in 1896 somebody built a railway up the front of it.

The Aberystwyth Cliff Railway opened on 1 August that year, 778 feet of track laid up the slope. It was designed by George Croydon Marks, who worked on several of the funiculars built during the boom in them, and who later sat in the House of Lords.

It ran on nothing but gravity to begin with. Each car had a tank under it. Fill the top one from the mains until that car outweighed the one below, and the heavy car sank and dragged the light one up. Empty the tank at the bottom and do it again. That lasted until 1921, when it was electrified.

It is the second longest funicular in the British Isles. Only the cliff railway at Lynton and Lynmouth in Devon is longer, at 862 feet, and that one opened six years earlier.

A camera obscura was added at the summit in 1985, with a fourteen-inch lens, one of the largest in the world. It throws a live image of the town, the bay and the hills onto a white dish in a darkened room. On a clear day you can see a long way up and down the coast.

Y Consti, the café at the top, looks out over the whole bay, and paths run off along the clifftop. You can walk down if the weather is kind. The railway runs all year but drops to a short winter timetable from November to March.

The town below had started as a resort just over thirty years earlier, when the railway arrived and the Royal Pier opened — the first pier in Wales.

The promenade still runs most of a mile between the castle ruin and the hill, with the pier partway along, and kicking the bar at the northern end remains the custom.

Staying in the middle of town means the car can stay where it is, which is worth more than it was. Since 18 May 2026 the seafront bays on Marine Terrace, Victoria Terrace and New Promenade have been pay and display, 8am to 8pm daily. Blue Badge holders are free. The seafront, castle, pier, cliff railway and station all sit inside half a mile of each other.

It is the best base on this coast for getting inland, too. The Vale of Rheidol steam train leaves from beside the main station for Devil's Bridge. The red kite feed at Bwlch Nant yr Arian is ten miles out on the A44.

The university keeps Aberystwyth open through the winter, so kitchens and bars here run year-round in a way most of this coast does not.