five places worth driving to.
we're based in monmouthshire, which puts you in the middle of some of the best landscape in britain. here's where we'd point you — depending on how long you've got and how far you feel like going.
the beacons. big sky, quiet roads.
forty minutes west of the garage and suddenly the world gets very large and very quiet. the beacons are the obvious first stop for a reason — proper dark skies, barely any traffic after six, and enough walking to justify eating whatever you want. park up near the storey arms or push further into the fforest fawr for the kind of silence you can actually hear. in winter, the peaks hold snow while the valleys stay green. in summer, the light in the evenings lasts longer than you'd expect this far west.
the wye. the one right on the doorstep.
the wye valley is what you drive through on the way out and spend the rest of the trip wishing you'd stayed longer. the river runs from the garage almost to the sea — through tintern, monmouth, symonds yat, ross-on-wye — and every mile of it is slightly implausible. the old growth woods above tintern abbey are as good as anywhere in britain for an early morning walk. the views from symonds yat rock are the kind that make people stop mid-sentence. and the pubs along the river are consistently the best argument against cooking in the van.
the black mountains. underrated. always.
just over the border from monmouthshire, the black mountains sit between the beacons and the english midlands and get overlooked by both. that's the point. the ridge from hay bluff south along the gospel pass is one of the finest ridgeline drives in wales — sixteen miles of open moorland with nobody on it. the villages below (partrishow, llanthony, capel-y-ffin) are absurdly quiet and haven't changed much since the twelfth century. park at llanthony priory on a weekday and you'll have the ruins almost to yourself.
pembrokeshire. when you want the sea.
two and a half hours from the garage — far enough to feel like a proper trip, close enough to do on a long weekend. the pembrokeshire coast path is one of the best in the uk, but you don't need to walk all 186 miles to understand why. barafundle bay, stackpole quay, marloes sands — any of them on a clear day is almost unreasonably good. the roads through the preseli hills are narrow and steep and perfect for a van. and in september, when the summer crowds have gone and the gorse is still in bloom, pembrokeshire is probably the best place in wales.
the gower. two hours south. worth every minute.
the gower was britain's first area of outstanding natural beauty, which is the kind of designation that normally means car parks and ice cream vans. the gower mostly ignores that. rhossili bay at the western tip is one of the best beaches in europe — three miles of atlantic-facing sand with a tidal island at the end and almost nothing else. the rest of the peninsula runs through tiny villages, blown heathland, and estuary marshes. go in the shoulder season, park overnight near the cliffs, and you'll understand why charlie has strong opinions about the gower at low tide.
specific routes, quiet spots, and places to park up.
the journal has longer pieces on specific trips — where to stop, where to eat, where to watch the sun go down.
read the journal