"Gower is a very beautiful peninsula, some miles from this blowsy town... As a matter of fact it is one of the loveliest sea-coast stretches in the whole of Britain.” So wrote Dylan Thomas in letters to his first girlfriend, Pamela Hansford Johnson.
This small but perfect peninsula in South Wales is just 70 square miles in size, bound by the Loughor Estuary to the north and Swansea Bay to the east. Yet between its shores are epic cliffs and sweeping beaches, fairytale woods and sleepy moorland villages.
And perhaps one of the reasons Gower feels so special is how you arrive: leave behind windswept Swansea and the dystopian factories at Port Talbot, pass through the pretty pastel tea shops of Mumbles, and the landscape changes. You’re somewhere wild, where ponies graze the marshes and miles of empty cliffs hang over the sea.
Such diversity and natural abundance makes Gower the perfect place to go walking, be it for a day, weekend or a whole week. So, without further ado, here are a few BBC Countryfile Magazine favourites.
Looking for more walks in Wales? Take a look at our trail guides to the Brecon Beacons, Snowdonia and Pembrokeshire.
Gower walks
Three Cliffs Bay
6 miles/4km | 3 hours | moderate
Three Cliffs Bay is a truly special place. The cliffs are triangles of a single promontory, swimming out like a dragon to guard a bay brightly ringed by Pennard Pill river, which has squirmed through the saltmarsh to reach it.
At high tide, Great Tor in the west grants seclusion. But at the tide’s ebb, Three Cliffs Bay merges with Tor Bay, Oxwich Bay and Pobbles Bay – with its dramatic cliffs and caves – to create one vast dazzling magnitude of sand.
Rhossili Bay
7.8 miles/12.5km | 5 hours | moderate | (return)
Overlooked by Rhossili Down, Rhossili Bay is a bare sweep of sand, rinsed clean by icy surf and cradled between two craggy limestone tidal islands called Burry Holms and Worm’s Head. They creep like fingers into the Atlantic Ocean, buffeted by its ship-wrecking winds.
To the south, Worm’s Head was named by the Vikings – wurm being Norse for dragon or serpent – and from Rhossili Down it does indeed look like a sinuous monster swimming out to sea.
There are plenty of walking options around Rhossili; to Worm’s Head at low tide perhaps, or along the Wales Coast Path north to Burry Holms. Or you can try a linear cliff-top walk from Rhossili Bay south-east to Paviland Cave.
Rhossili Bay to Paviland Cave walk
Pwll Du Bay
3.8 miles/6.1km | 2.5 hours | moderate | (return)
The shady woods around Bishopston are a glorious place to explore. From the village green at Kittle, quickly descend into a secret valley – follow the National Trust trail along the riverbank, past a flowing waterfall, and emerge on Pwll Du Bay.
If you feel like you’re discovering a secret path to the shore, you’re in good company – the woods were once a hiding place for smugglers evading capture after they landed on the beach.
Cathole Cave
5.7 miles / 9.2km | 3.5 hours | moderate
Cathole Rock cave in the Gower has a layer of sediment on the floor which has yielded finds that traverse Ice Ages and inter-glacials. Bronze Age tools and pottery. Paleolithic bones of mammoth, woolly rhino, red deer and giant deer. Reindeer, Arctic fox, tundra vole and brown bear.
This 5.7-mile circular walk takes you from the Gower Heritage Centre in Parkmill to Cathole Rock cave, returning via Pengwern Common, the pretty village of Ilston and the wooded valley of Ilston Cwm.
Cefn Bryn
8 miles /12.8km | 5 hours | moderate
From Gower’s coasts, Cefn Bryn is a gently swelling sandstone ridge that invites your eyes and eventually your legs along its length.
Scattered over it are prehistoric hut circles, burnt mounds and cairns, most notably the magnificent Maen Ceti (King Arthur’s Stone), a Neolithic cromlech that, built to shelter human bones, now harbours lichens and rain.
