Cardiff & Snowdonia in 2 days, on foot

This 2-day self-guided walking plan for Cardiff & Snowdonia covers 13 narrated sights in an easy day-by-day order. Each day is split into a morning and an afternoon loop, and every stop has a two to three minute audio story in the Gingerguide app.

You set the pace: this is a suggested order, not a schedule. Walk it in 2 days, or stretch it out. Reorder freely; Cardiff & Snowdonia rewards a detour.

The Cardiff & Snowdonia route at a glance

Day 1

Day 1 covers 7 stops over about 222 km as the crow flies, from Brecon Beacons (Bannau Brycheiniog) to Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. ≈ 222 km between stops, straight line

Morning

1. Brecon Beacons (Bannau Brycheiniog): Mid Wales's range of flat-topped sandstone mountains, crowned by Pen y Fan at 886 metres, a friendly but serious summit with a Bronze Age burial cairn and half of Wales in the view. 41 km to the next stop
2. Castell Coch: A storybook Victorian castle of three conical-roofed towers above the woods north of Cardiff, built by William Burges for the Marquess of Bute on a ruined medieval fortress, with fantastical painted interiors. 5.6 km to the next stop
3. St Fagans National Museum of History: A beloved free open-air museum west of Cardiff, where forty-odd historic Welsh buildings, saved from across the country, have been rebuilt to walk through, around an Elizabethan manor house. 7.9 km to the next stop
4. Cardiff Bay: Cardiff's reinvented waterfront on a man-made lake: the slate-clad Wales Millennium Centre with its glowing poetry, the glass Senedd of the Welsh Parliament, and the old coal-age Pierhead. 2.3 km to the next stop

Afternoon

1. Cardiff Castle: In the capital's heart, a castle of three ages: a Roman fort, a Norman keep on the largest motte in Wales, and William Burges's dazzling Victorian Gothic interiors for the Marquess of Bute. 0.5 km to the next stop
2. National Museum Cardiff: A free museum of art and natural history in Cathays Park, from the Evolution of Wales galleries to an astonishing Impressionist collection left by the Davies sisters, Monet to Van Gogh. 165 km to the next stop
3. Pontcysyllte Aqueduct: A canal in the sky: the longest aqueduct in Britain and the highest canal aqueduct in the world, carrying narrowboats 38 metres above the Dee in Telford and Jessop's iron trough.

Day 2

Day 2 covers 6 stops over about 88 km as the crow flies, from Llandudno & the Great Orme to Portmeirion. ≈ 88 km between stops, straight line

Morning

1. Llandudno & the Great Orme: Wales's grand Victorian seaside resort, a crescent of hotels and the country's longest pier beneath the Great Orme, a headland of tram rides, sea views and Bronze Age copper mines. 4.7 km to the next stop
2. Conwy Castle: One of Edward I's mightiest Welsh fortresses, eight round towers on a rock above the Conwy, ringed by a near-complete medieval walled town, a UNESCO-listed masterpiece of military architecture. 21 km to the next stop
3. Betws-y-Coed: The grey-stone gateway village of Snowdonia, where three rivers meet, known for Telford's iron Waterloo Bridge of 1815 and the white cascades of nearby Swallow Falls. 19 km to the next stop

Afternoon

1. Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa): The roof of Wales at 1,085 metres, the highest peak south of the Scottish Highlands, climbed on foot or by Britain's only rack-and-pinion mountain railway from Llanberis to a station near the top. 16 km to the next stop
2. Caernarfon Castle: Edward I's most imperial Welsh fortress by the Menai Strait, with banded walls and polygonal, eagle-topped towers echoing Rome, and the stage for the modern investitures of the Prince of Wales. 28 km to the next stop
3. Portmeirion: A pastel Italianate fantasy village on a north Wales estuary, built over fifty years by Clough Williams-Ellis and famous as The Village in the cult series The Prisoner.

Distances are straight-line between stops; streets add a little.

Updated: October 8, 2026

Full Cardiff & Snowdonia guide and all stops →