A walk into the heart of Wales

Explore the great abbeys of the Cistercian order, the little churches of the Welsh hills, the amazing geology of the Pembrokeshire coast, Stone Age burial mounds, medieval castles and sheep-farms.

1450

PLACES VISITED

4607

PICTURES TAKEN

7039

MILES TRAVELLED

North Routes

From Conwy the Cistercian Way follows the North Wales Pilgrim's Way over the rolling hills of Denbighshire and Flintshire to Basingwerk. You can visit Gwytherin (where St Winefride founded her monastery), the little cathedral city of St Asaph and the enigmatic Celtic cross at Maen Achwyfan. More energetic walkers can explore high-level routes over the Denbighshire moors to Brenig and the Clwydian Range.

East Routes

The Cistercian Way goes down the eastern border of Wales past the great abbeys of Valle Crucis and Cwm-hir, through spectacular and little-walked scenery, then down the Wye Valley to Tintern..

South Routes

This section of the route takes you over the hills of South Wales, above the mining valleys with their terraced houses, along the coast and through the rolling countryside of Carmarthenshire.

West Routes

From Tenby follow footpaths to the next abbey at Whitland. Footpaths and quiet side roads take you through the ancient Brenig Forest to Llanllyr and the 'Westminster Abbey of Wales', Strata Florida. Up through the Hafod woods, over the shoulders of Pumlumon and Cader Idris, pick up the great Roman road past Cymmer Abbey and on to the coast of north Wales.

About The Cistercian Way

The Cistercian Way is more than a long-distance path: it is a walk into the heart of Wales. Explore the great abbeys of the Cistercian order, the little churches of the Welsh hills, the amazing geology of the Pembrokeshire coast, Stone Age burial mounds, medieval castles and sheep-farms, picturesque landscaped gardens and the industrial heritage of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Walk along Roman roads, medieval pilgrimage routes and nineteenth-century canal towpaths. Let the route take you to friendly villages, remote mountains and spectacular coastlines.

This web site is very much ‘work in progress’ — as is the whole Cistercian Way project. We started in 1998 trying to work out a way that we could walk round Wales, linking all the Welsh Cistercian abbeys, medieval and modern. This was part of the celebrations of the 900th anniversary of the foundation of the Cistercian order. We worked on developing the route and walked it again in 2005.

On this website you will find an outline of the routes we took in 1998 and 2005, notes on improvements we have made since, lots of background information on the places we walked through. We used existing rights of way, footpaths and green lanes, and quiet side roads. This means that you can walk it for yourselves, using the Ordnance Survey maps of Wales.

There may be places where you have to improvise because we ran out of time and had to walk along the road. There may be places you want to visit that we didn't have time to go to, or things you know about the route that you would like to share.

We would like your input into the project. Tell us about the way you went, what you found, what you felt about it all — and let us know if we can put your ideas on the website.

If you wish to receive information about the progress of this project and/or would consider becoming a Friend of Cistercian Way Wales please email john@cistercianway.wales