Medieval Town of Kenfig

The ruins sprawl across a windswept headland just outside Porthcawl, and you'll understand why medieval settlers chose this spot - the views sweep across Swansea Bay in one direction and back towards the Glamorgan coast in the other. Kenfig was once a proper walled town, complete with castle, church, and market streets. Now it's mostly earthworks and broken stones, but that's rather the point.

Walking the site takes a good hour if you're paying attention to the information boards and actually trying to piece together where things stood. The castle mound is obvious enough, and the church ruins are substantial enough to get a sense of scale. What you won't find are crowds - it's quiet in a way that lets you actually think about what happened here across five centuries before the whole thing got swallowed by sand dunes in the 1400s.

History enthusiasts will find this rewarding. Kids under ten might lose interest once they've climbed the mound. The walk from Porthcawl town is straightforward but takes the best part of half an hour each way, so factor that in. There's a small car park right at the site entrance, which helps.

It pairs well with Trecco Bay Holiday Park if you're basing yourself nearby - the park's only a couple of miles away, and this makes for an afternoon outing that doesn't require driving to somewhere else. Free to visit, no opening hours to worry about, and genuinely interesting if you like archaeology that doesn't require a museum building round it.