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The Teifi is the reason the town is there. It is a salmon river, and a sewin one, sewin being the Welsh name for sea trout. Above the town at Cilgerran it runs through a steep wooded gorge below a ruined castle.

On the marshes under that gorge is the Welsh Wildlife Centre, with hides looking out over reedbed and river and paths through willow and alder. The coast is a short drive either way: Mwnt, Aberporth and Tresaith to the north, Poppit Sands and the start of the Pembrokeshire cliffs to the south.

The Teifi is one of only three rivers in Wales where coracles are still fished, and they have been on it a very long time.

A coracle is a one-man boat: a frame of split willow or hazel with a skin stretched over it, hide at first and later cotton cloth sealed with tar. It weighs little enough to carry home on your back, which is the whole point of it.

Travellers were writing about coracles on the Teifi near Cardigan by 1769. They described cloth stretched over a few slight ribs, holding one man, who carried the thing home over his head like an umbrella.

They were working boats, not curiosities. Two men would fish a net strung between a pair of coracles, drifting down with the current for sewin and salmon, usually at night.

Licences are now strictly limited and only a handful are issued each year for the Teifi, so the fishery survives in a small way rather than as a trade.

Cenarth, nine miles upstream on the A484, is the place to see the boats themselves. The falls there are a salmon leap. The National Coracle Centre sits in the old mill beside them, and it holds coracles from rivers all over the world as well as the Teifi type.

The river is the reason to base yourself here. Above the town at Cilgerran the Teifi cuts a steep wooded gorge under a ruined castle. The Welsh Wildlife Centre sits on the marshes below the gorge, with hides over reedbed and river.

You can walk there from Cardigan along the riverside, which is flat and takes about an hour.

A week with a kitchen works well here because the food is close by. Cardigan has butchers, bakers and the covered Guildhall Market. Crwst on the High Street bakes its own bread daily.

The Teifi valley is the quiet side of this corner of Wales. Newcastle Emlyn is twelve miles inland and Llandysul another eight beyond it, where the river runs through farmland and the lanes stay empty even in August.

The coast is a short drive either way: Mwnt, Aberporth and Tresaith north along the Ceredigion cliffs, Poppit Sands and the Pembrokeshire path to the south.