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Sit on the left when you catch the train from Swansea to Carmarthen, and you can watch huge sandy estuaries unspool outside the window. There’s a curlew standing by the water, an egret-haunted pool in the wetlands, and a boardwalk along the foreshore, part of the 870-mile Wales Coast Path. It has been a six-hour, four-train journey to get here from Essex, but I’ll soon be on foot.

Carmarthenshire has picturesque railways, a network of buses, and some epic long-distance paths, so it makes for an ideal car-free break. The 13-mile Tywi Valley Path (officially opening in time for Easter) will link Abergwili near Carmarthen and Ffairfach near Llandeilo, helping walkers and cyclists access some lovely scenery. I’m visiting just before Saint David’s Day, and there are daffodils everywhere. Carmarthenshire offers a quintessentially Welsh experience, packed with castles, cockles and cawl (stew).

As I set off from Ferryside station, there’s a view of the ruined 12th-century Llansteffan Castle across the estuary. The Three Rivers hotel and spa, where I’m due to stay tonight, is 10 minutes into my walk. I drop off my bag and press on, feeling buoyant. I’m heading for Kidwelly, five miles from Ferryside along a hilly, inland stretch of coast path.

I’m soon winding down through mossy, snowdrop-beaded woods, where primroses glimmer in banks of ferns and bluebells are sprouting. When I walk up to the lane above, sudden sunshine lights the distant sea, and the veiny salt marsh is fretted with silver. Offshore winds have trimmed the trees slantwise, neat as a fresh fade from a stylish barber. The paths are still boggy in places, and there are no other walkers until the final, tarmacked half-mile, where teal and redshank pipe from the mud-banked River Gwendraeth.

Kidwelly Castle (£8.50 adults, £5.90 kids) is a maze of wall walks, spiral stairs and cavernous towers with views across sepia reed beds. Gwenllian, who led a Welsh army against the Normans in the 12th century, fought her final battle nearby. Newest among Kidwelly’s pubs and cafes, Y Barbican opened in November 2025; it offers armchairs and freshly made cakes – worth the uphill walk from the castle.

There’s a regular train service between Kidwelly and Ferryside, but bus 198 runs directly back to my hotel, where I head to the spa. A mural by the pool, painted by owner Jackie Cavill, mirrors the view outside: hilltop Llansteffan Castle, framed by gulls and oystercatchers. Through the windows, the sun sets behind a tall Scots pine.

The next morning, I stroll to the station along the low-tide beach. Wintering ducks and geese gather on seaweed-blanketed sandbanks. Today’s destination is the 230-hectare National Botanic Garden of Wales (NBGW), where car-free visitors get 50% off entry (full price £19 adults, £10 kids). It’s an hour or so’s cycle from Carmarthen, mostly on route 47 of the UK’s National Cycle Network. Brompton bikes are available to hire at Carmarthen bus station, but the drizzle is becoming torrential …

Bus 279 runs four times a week from Carmarthen to NBGW, and there’s one due in an hour. Cash-only Pantri Blakeman, up some stairs opposite the bus station, is a great place to wait. There’s a daffs-and-dragons frieze around the walls and a menu offering cockles and bacon on toast with laverbread and leek cawl.

The landscaped grounds of NBGW are cheerful, even in the pouring rain, with blossom, birdsong and thousands of spring bulbs. In the Tropical House, there are banana palms, bugle plants and bright flamingo lilies. Outside, dunnocks hop around heavy-headed hellebores and bullfinches feast on lakeside buds. Several sparrows chirrup noisily from the olives in the world’s largest single-span glasshouse. Designed by Foster + Partners, the Great Glasshouse houses more than 1,000 species of Mediterranean plant, soft fronds of scarlet honey myrtle, yellow-flowered cassia and fresh-scented Christmas heather among them. I just have time for a mustardy rarebit in the cafe before heading back to the bus.

The rain has stopped when I get off near Abergwili and walk the last bit of the Tywi Valley Path, a traffic-free, well-kept stretch of road alongside a former railway track. It leads to the Bishop’s Park, where the oxbow lake and ornamental evergreens attract siskins, goldcrests, grebes and slate-blue nuthatches. The old bishop’s palace is home to Carmarthenshire Museum (free). In Carmarthen, two miles west, I’m staying in the delightfully time-warped Falcon hotel. Close to the bus station, it offers cockles au gratin for dinner and cheese-and-leek sausages with a veggie breakfast.

The next morning, I take bus 280 through green countryside to the colourful market town of Llandeilo, near the eastern end of the Tywi Valley Path. There are views of wooded Merlin’s Hill, topped with an iron age fort, and the dramatic ruins of Castell Dryslwyn (free).

Castell Dinefwr (free), in the sprawling Dinefwr park next to Llandeilo, was once home to Lord Rhys, whose peaceful rule led to a flowering of Welsh music and poetry. I drop in to Pitchfork & Provision in Llandeilo, then head through bluebell woods to the hidden Llandyfeisant church, half overgrown with ivy, and the atmospheric castle ruins, on a wooded hill above the River Tywi.

The estate’s 18th-century owners landscaped the park with trees and waterways. A boardwalk among ferns and catkins leads to little waterfalls, slopes of pungent wild garlic, and a bird hide overlooking the lake. I stop to warm up in the National Trust cafe at Newton House (£12 adults, £6 kids), with a garden full of tulips. The guy in the cafe hands out Saint David’s Day postcards with a recipe for Welsh cakes.

Back at Pitchfork & Provision, the owner Rachel Mabbitt tells me how the business has expanded from a bakery, founded with a friend during lockdown, to include a popular cafe and deli. A perfectly cooked bowl of vegetable cawl comes with tangy Pitchfork cheddar, and the bara brith (spiced tea bread) is gooey and delicious. It’s a 10-minute walk to Llandeilo station, where trains on the scenic Heart of Wales line stop five times a day (twice on Sundays). The railway rolls towards Swansea past hilly woods, soft reed beds and the winding River Loughor.

The trip was supported by Discover Carmarthenshire. Some transport was provided by Great Western Railway (advance tickets from Swansea to Carmarthen start at £8.10; £39.50 from London Paddington). Accommodation was provided by Three Rivers hotel and spa (B&B doubles from £120) and Falcon hotel and restaurant (B&B doubles from £110)