Gwesty Cymru

The Best-Scoring Hotel on Aberystwyth’s Promenade

Number nineteen, Marine Terrace. That address puts Gwesty Cymru directly on the Victorian seafront, three minutes from the sand of the North Beach and five hundred metres from the castle — and among the hotels standing on that promenade, none is rated higher. Six hundred and seven guests have given it a 9 out of 10.

The name translates as, roughly, Hotel Wales, and the place lives up to the claim rather than merely making it: this is a design-led, Welsh-run, thoroughly modern hotel occupying an old seafront terrace, and it is the most interesting building to stay in on this front.

The rooms

Recently renovated throughout, and the difference shows. Each bedroom has a private bathroom, a desk, a television and — a genuine rarity on this coast — air conditioning. Some look out over Cardigan Bay; others face back into the town. Interconnected rooms can be arranged for families travelling together. It is a small hotel and the sea-facing rooms are the ones people telephone about, so ask for one by name if that is what you want.

One thing to settle before you commit: above the ground floor there is no lift, only a staircase. In a Victorian terrace that is entirely normal, but it does mean guests who would struggle with a staircase should say so at the time of booking.

Eating, drinking, sitting outside

Breakfast is rated “superb” — continental or a full cooked plate, with fresh pastries, fruit and juice, and special diets catered for on request. There is a bar and a coffee house on the premises. Out at the back: a garden, plus a properly furnished sun terrace with umbrellas over it, which on a warm evening in Aberystwyth is a considerably better proposition than it sounds; the town gets more sunshine than its reputation allows. There is even a small workout area.

The promenade outside the door

Marine Terrace is part of one of the great Victorian seafronts, a mile-long curve of painted houses facing Cardigan Bay. There is a local ritual attached to it: on reaching the far end you are expected to kick the bar. Students have been doing it for well over a century and nobody can satisfactorily explain why, which is rather the point of a ritual.

Walk south along the front instead and you come to the castle — thirteenth century, comprehensively ruined by Cromwell, free to wander around, and standing on a headland with the sea on three sides of it. Beyond that lies the harbour, where the Rheidol and the Ystwyth run out together past the boats. The whole circuit takes an hour and it is the single best thing to do in Aberystwyth.

Cardiff Airport is 163 kilometres away — a useful reminder of quite how far west you have travelled.

A hotel that is properly Welsh

The name is not decoration. Gwesty Cymru is run in Welsh as well as English, and it makes a point of Welsh produce, Welsh drink and Welsh design in a way that most hotels on this coast do not bother with. Aberystwyth is one of the strongholds of the language — you will hear it in the shops and on the promenade, not as a performance for visitors but because it is simply what people speak here — and staying somewhere that reflects that is a large part of what makes this hotel worth the extra money over the terraces either side of it.

Worth knowing

Air conditioning, a bar, a coffee house, a garden, a sun terrace, WiFi and parking. No lift — stairs above the ground floor. Rooms open at around £155 a night, which places Gwesty Cymru at the upper end of the Aberystwyth hotels on this page — you are paying for the seafront position, the renovation and a hotel that has clearly been thought about rather than merely inherited.