Swansea Hotels

More About Hotels in Swansea

The Swansea end of the bay has the marina, the market and the streets behind them. Wind Street is where the bars and restaurants are, and it fills up in the evening. The sand is a couple of minutes from the shops, so you can walk to the sea from almost anywhere in the centre.

Go the other way and the Gower begins. Reynoldston sits under Cefn Bryn, the ridge that runs along the middle of Gower. Parkmill is where the valley drops away towards Three Cliffs Bay. From Parkmill you can walk through the woods to the stepping stones at Three Cliffs Bay in about fifteen minutes. Oxwich and Port Eynon are another twenty minutes west along the south coast. Hotels in Swansea sit at both ends of that route, in the city and out on the Gower at Reynoldston and Parkmill.

Copper, whisky and the Brangwyn panels

Swansea smelted copper on a scale nowhere else matched. It had the coal, a sheltered river mouth and a short crossing to the Cornish mines. So the ore came to the fuel. The works at Hafod were started by a Cornishman called John Vivian. They grew into the largest copper works in the world and kept going until 1980.

Penderyn now runs a whisky distillery in the old power house at Hafod. Tours are capped at twenty people, so book before you go, because turning up does not guarantee a place. Hafod is on the northern side of the city, a short drive from the marina and the Swansea hotels in the centre.

The painter Frank Brangwyn was asked to fill a hall in the House of Lords with panels. They were to remember the dead of the First World War. The Lords turned the panels down as too colourful and too lively for a war memorial. Swansea took all sixteen and raised the ceiling of its new assembly hall past forty feet so they would fit.

The room carries his name, and the Brangwyn Hall is a working concert venue rather than a museum. The Guildhall around it is under refurbishment. Ring Swansea Council before you go. Whether you can see the panels depends on what is on that week. Hotels in Swansea city centre and at the marina are within walking distance of the hall.

Beaches and the evening

Oxwich is the easy beach from the city, a long shallow bay you can park beside. Rhossili is the opposite: three miles of open sand with the Atlantic coming straight in. Nobody watches the swimmers there at any point in the year.

If you want somebody keeping an eye out, Langland and Caswell are patrolled from early May to mid-September. Port Eynon is patrolled for around nine weeks from July. Oxwich and Three Cliffs get no patrol either, so it is worth taking extra care in the sea there. Langland, Caswell, Port Eynon and Rhossili are all rated excellent for bathing water quality.

In the evening most people end up on Wind Street. Down at the marina you can eat outside by the boats, and it is all close enough to walk between. Oystermouth Castle sits above Mumbles at the far end of the bay, and it is open daily through the season.