Why the 'Biarritz of Wales' is one of Britain's best-kept secrets

Aberystwyth does not put a face on for tourists. At first glance, the tall but tired pastel-coloured terrace along its front resembles a packet of parma violets that has spilt inside your handbag and spent a few weeks scuffing around in the bottom.

Looks, however, aren’t everything. For this small seaside town on Wales’ west coast is an unpolished gem. I visit at least six times a year and, wary as I am to share the secret, journalistic integrity compels me to admit: it might be having something of a moment.   

For one, there’s its university which has been applauded in recent years due to the quality of its teaching. A thriving student and teaching body, coupled with the presence of the National Library of Wales, gives the town a surprising cultural vibrancy and a population that swells by 7,000 in term time.

Then, of course, there is Hinterland. The gritty Welsh detective drama is set in the city and surrounding landscape, and while it doesn’t exactly paint it as Aruba, it has spawned a small tourism industry of its own. The town’s official website now includes a map of filming locations, should you wish to visit the site where ‘the dead and dying parents of Llew Morris are found’. Each to their own.

I prefer to start on the fringes of the city centre, at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre or the National Library. The latter is a legal deposit library, like the British Library or Oxford’s Bodleian, housing 6,000,000 books and newspapers and 950,000 photographs. There are often great talks and workshops on, and always a good exhibition to browse.

Next door, Wales’ largest arts centre also has a packed and impressive programme of touring theatre and concerts, an art house cinema, exhibition space and a bar with a panoramic view over a harbour that was once the second busiest port in Wales.

It was the railway, however, that first brought real tourism to Aber in the early 20th century. Victorians came in their droves to stay at swish new hotels and, in a piece of rather ambitious marketing, the town was even dubbed the ‘Biarritz of Wales’. Today, Britain’s longest electric cliff railway is a perpetual hit with my children. Called the Aberystwyth Electric Railway, it runs from the promenade up to a café, the world’s largest camera obscura and sweeping views at the top (unless, this being Wales, bad weather obscures them).

Back down at sea-level, we then make a beeline for the Ceredigion Museum. Looking shiny after a grant of nearly ￡1 million in 2016, it holds regular children’s workshops in everything from puppet making to fabric printing.

By which time a good lunch is in order and, fortunately, Aber’s food scene is thriving. The big cheese on the scene (in more senses than one) is Ultracomida, a deli and tapas bar that has become a magnet for Welsh foodies. Its owners import some of the finest ingredients from Spain, such as unrivalled charcuterie and impeccable cheese. It also makes a mean churros y chocolate and fantastic aubergine fritters with cumin and honey. 

And there’s more. Newly expanded Medina serves Ottolenghi-inspired sharing plates in a bright and modern dining room while Pysgoty, a little fish restaurant perched on the harbour front, was shortlisted for the 2018 UK-wide Seafood Restaurant of the Year award.

Food shopping in the old town is a joy too. Aberystwyth Farmers Market was named Best Food Market by BBC Radio 4 Food and Farming Awards a few years ago, with smokers, curers and brewers all represented every third Saturday of the month.

Meanwhile, the sizeable hippy community around Aber head for Treehouse. It’s like Harrods for vegans, with three floors of organic produce and a cafe. If you’ve no beef with meat, there’s Rattrays the butcher (do not pass without purchasing his treacle cured bacon) while Jonah’s fishmonger is owned by the people behind Pysgoty and stocked with the best fresh local catch.

My husband loses afternoons inside Coastal Vintage, an Aladdin’s cave of antique objects and oddities, with a particularly good line in vintage menswear. Booklovers and academics, on the other hand, cluster within Ysywyth Books – a modest looking shop that is in fact a tardis, housing 80,000 new and second-hand books that fill the walls, line the staircases and cover all subjects from poetry to pottery.

When the kids get fidgety, it is time to head to the playground, which sits in the shadow of Aber’s castle, first constructed in 1277 after Edward I's defeat of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd. Watching the children play here, as the sun sets over its ruins and the grey Irish sea beyond, even the biggest doubters must begrudgingly admit that, while few might choose to sunbath on Aber’s beaches, it has a magic of its very own.