We've been to Wales a few times but never been to Aberystwyth for some reason I just thought another Welsh seaside town.

Aberystwyth is kind of half way up the coast of Wales, a bit down from Barmouth and a lot up from Cardigan Bay!

We visited this October half term for the first time and what a pleasant surprise, we got there at lunch time and need a supermarket, we found a great big Morrisons which in that part of Wales is quite unusual!! We were staying an hour away in Twywn and from there there are no large supermarkets near by.

From Morrisons we followed signs to the seafront as we had a picnic and wanted to just stop for a couple of hours to look around. It was hard to find a space to park - yes even in Oct half term so I have no idea what it would be like in the summer. It's a minimum of 2hrs parking so I guess someone is bound to move on at some point but it's catching it. There are two beaches to Aberystwyth I guess if looking out to the sea a quieter one to the left and the more main one to the right. We parked near the right side and had our picnic in the car (a bit chilly outside!) and watched the people.

There was a lovely craft market in a building on the seafront which was nice and reasonably priced. Being as we were there with the children it wasn't a shopping trip so we didn't stop. Aberystwyth has some lovely old buildings along the front including one which is now part of the university I saw them doing art in the window - how lovely to do art along the seafront in a gorgeous old building! It also has the ruins to a castle and much to our surprise it's free to look round, the children had a great time on this because there were many bits to climb and look around they had great fun pretending which rooms were what! Other children I could see were enjoying it too. In the summer it would be a lovely place to have a picnic too.

from the vantage point of the Castle we noticed that near to where we had originaly parked there was a cliff railway and we reckoned we had time to walk along the front and get to it and back before the car ran out of time!

So off we went. The Cliff railway was built in the 1800's to go up to a camera obscura. The railway cost £11 for family ticket (2 adults and 2 children). It was great fun and the views were great, we didn't go in the camera obscura we were running out of time after having a coffee and ice cream in the little cafe at the top which incidentally can be hired out for parties and even weddings - wow imagine that!! The Camera obscura cost £1 for adults and children free with an adult which I have to say is great value for money. The cliff railway is struggling to survive so on the way up they ask if anyone is a tax payer and wouldn't mind filling in a form so that they get tax back on what you've paid to go up - it all helps so we had no problem with doing that. It looked as if in the summer there is also a bouncy castle at the top for children to go on and frizbee golf which I've never heard of!

This was basically our trip to Aberystwyth but we'll definitely go again and spend more time there, on the way out we noticed that there were park and ride places so you could go in for longer. The university is massive so there is a lot of students around which means it's kept young and there are a lot of good shops through the shopping centre. It looked a good place to shop too.

One small thing if you like sandy beaches - it is not!! it's that gritty kind of fine sand! weird stuff but as a place of interest it is worth visiting.