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The castle sits at the town end of the old bridge. It reopened in 2015 after a restoration costing about £12 million, and you can walk the grounds, see the exhibition and eat there.

From the bridge the High Street climbs, with the covered Guildhall Market halfway up it. The beaches start three or four miles out. Mwnt is the nearest, a steep-sided cove with a whitewashed medieval church above it. Poppit Sands lies across the river in Pembrokeshire.

At Christmas in 1176, the Lord Rhys held a gathering at his castle in Cardigan and invited poets and musicians from across Wales and beyond.

He announced it a year ahead so people had time to prepare, and he set two chairs as prizes: one for poetry, one for music. A poet from Gwynedd took one and a musician from Rhys's own household took the other.

That is the first eisteddfod anybody wrote down, and every National Eisteddfod since traces back to it. Rhys ap Gruffydd ruled Deheubarth, the kingdom covering most of south-west Wales, and Cardigan was his main stronghold.

The castle had a long decline afterwards. It became a private house, then stood empty, and by the 1990s it was propped up with scaffolding and on the register of buildings at risk.

A restoration costing about £12 million brought it back, with a Heritage Lottery grant behind it, and it reopened in 2015.

Today you can walk the grounds and the restored gardens, go through the exhibition on the eisteddfod story, and eat in the restaurant in the old house. A nine-foot eisteddfod chair stands at the top of the East Tower.

Concerts run on the castle lawns through the summer, and the site keeps its own walled kitchen garden behind the house.

The town below is small enough to walk in an evening. A guest house anywhere in it puts the castle, the quay and the old bridge inside ten minutes on foot. The High Street climbs from the bridge past the covered Guildhall Market. Crwst bakes and cooks on the corner, and there are tables out beside the river on the quay through the summer.

Cardigan is a market town first and a visitor town second, which is why it stays open through the winter when the coastal villages thin out.

It is also where two coasts meet. The Ceredigion Coast Path ends at the Teifi and the Pembrokeshire Coast Path starts across the river. You can walk into either county from the same doorstep. The beaches at Mwnt, Poppit Sands and Gwbert are a short drive out.