St David, Meidrim

The little church of St David sits in Meidrim village, a quiet corner of Carmarthenshire that most visitors driving between Carmarthen and the Tywi Valley completely miss. It's a medieval church, modest in scale but with genuine character - the sort of place where you half expect to find someone still saying prayers rather than browsing a gift shop.

What you're looking at is a working parish church with roots going back centuries, though it's been rebuilt and patched up plenty of times since then. The interior is properly simple: stone walls, wooden pews, the kind of honest lack of fuss that makes some people feel peaceful and others slightly uncomfortable. There's no grand architecture to write home about, no soaring nave or stained glass that'll take your breath away. This is a church for locals, by locals.

It works best for people who actually enjoy church architecture and local history - the sort who'll spend twenty minutes reading every plaque and thinking about who got married here in 1847. Families with restless kids will get bored in about ten minutes flat. Walking types doing a circuit of the Tywi Valley or staying at one of the nearby farms like Llain Farm Glamping or Kaowood Country Park might pop in on their way past, but you wouldn't plan a day around it.

Admission is free - it's a working church, after all. Allow fifteen minutes, half an hour if you're genuinely interested in the details. Best visited mid-morning when there's natural light and you won't feel like you're intruding on someone's Sunday service.