Luxury Private Guided Sightseeing Tours of Wales with Chauffeurs UK

Discover Wales

Although it retains its own language, spoken mainly in the north by about one-fifth of the population, Wales was conquered by the English King Edward I in 1281 and the union of the two countries was formalised in 1536. Yet, even now, it maintains a separate identity, partly due to the Cambrian Mountains that provide a protective barrier against excessive influence from England to the east. So, for example, the Welsh maintain a strong non-conformist and socialist tradition. The Welsh are a Celtic people, with a tradition of choral singing. Every year a large national eisteddfod, or festival, is held at which the best choirs compete for honours. Wales has a climate that ranges from mild on the coast to quite severe on the hills, the high rainfall underpinning a long tradition of dairy farming.

The country was largely rural until the 19th century, when a rich seam of coal was discovered in Glamorgan, bringing an influx of people from other parts of Wales and the rest of Britain. A thriving steel industry was also established. South Wales has undergone a rapid transformation in the last 25 years from a coal-and-steel-dependent economy to a mixed economy based on high-tech manufacturing, port facilities and oil-refining, tourism, and services. Cardiff, capital of the region and of Wales as a whole, has benefitted from the general trend within Europe to regionalisation, and many major corporations have chosen the city as their base for doing business in Wales. The landscape of South Wales, from Newport westwards to Swansea, bears the scars of the industrial past, especially in the former South Wales coalfield region, known as the Valleys, where lines of miners' cottages cling to the hillsides among the grassed-over spoil tips. Beyond Swansea and Llanelli, however, the counties of Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire take in some of the most beautiful, unspoiled coasts and landscapes in the British Isles, with their bird-filled estuaries and islands, their fishing ports, and their prosperous farming towns.