Hostels in Wales

Wales, also known as "Cymru" in Welsh, is a home to some stunning nature, history, and spectacular castle ruins. There are literally hundreds of different castles here rich with history for the castle buff to explore.

The capital city of Wales, Cardiff, is a great place to get a hostel to start your journey. This city is renowned for its nightlife and is home to quite a large amount of bachelor and bachelorette parties that traipse their way through the city every Saturday night. It is also a popular university town with a large number of students studying here. So you will find the nightlife to be fairly young and upbeat. Your hostel staff should be able to direct you to where all of the cool places to head out and about are during the evenings. Make sure you also take some time to chill out and check out Bute Park, Coch Castle, and the beautiful Cardiff Bay area before you move on from here to explore the rest of the country. Cardiff has quite a few hostels in the city that you can base yourself from, but it can be quite busy at different times of year. So don't get caught out, it's a city where you should book your hostel in advance.

From here in Cardiff you can also plan your route as you drive around and take in the stunning coastal views along the south. This is where most of the castles are condensed as well, so do some reading up and choose the ones you want to visit for ease of getting about. The easiest way to see things properly is to do a self-guided tour in a car, as public transport will not stop along the way at the more interesting places to see. It will be cheaper if you can get some people together to subsidize fuel and car costs. Along this southern coastal route all the way out to St David's on the west coast you will find the odd hostel in some of the towns along the way that you can stay in including Swansea and Haverfordwest. Each of the towns has only one or two hostels each, so it is best to have a rough idea of where you are going to stay. Keep in mind that the roads are narrow and that the typical drive times are much longer than what you will originally anticipate.

From here you can drive up north along the coastal route through to the Snowdonia National Park. It's known for having some of the most beautiful scenery in the United Kingdom and Mount Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales. Along the way, there are again small towns which are home to one or two hostels, but they are not overly abundant. It is always a good idea to call in advance and make sure that you can secure a place to stay for the evening before moving on.

While you are up and exploring the north, make sure that you stop and take in the castle at Caenarfon. Most of the super impressive castles in Wales are in the northern parts of the country and are not to be missed. They are absolutely spectacular.

Handwritten by local expert for Wales hostels Globetrotter