Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
down to the river. Kids will enjoy the castle grounds - there are plenty of staircases, bat-
tlements and wall walks to explore, and lots of green space.
A cave in the cliff below the castle is one of many places where legend says King Ar-
thur and his knights are napping until the day they're needed to save Britain.
Once the entire town was enclosed in fortifications, fastening it to the castle. Parts of
You can see it from the Welsh St car park and near the train station. Chepstow's main
GOOGLE MAP
, the original city
gate, which was restored in the 16th century.
Chepstow Museum
OFFLINE MAP
MUSEUM
GOOGLE MAP
(Bridge St; 11am-5pm Mon-Sat, 2-5pm Sun)
Housed in an 18th-century town house just
across the road from the castle, this small, child-friendly museum covers Chepstow's in-
dustrial and social history. A collection of 18th- and 19th-century prints and drawings re-
flects the area's importance to early tourists and students of the picturesque.
THE WYE TOUR
The Wye Valley has a valid claim to be the birthplace of British tourism. Boat trips along the River Wye began
commercially in 1760, but a best-selling book - in fact, one of the first ever travel guidebooks - William Gilpin's
Observations on the River Wye and Several Parts of South Wales
(1771), inspired hundreds of people to take the
boat trip down the river from Ross-on-Wye (in England) to Chepstow, visiting the various beauty spots and his-
torical sites en route. Early tourists included many famous figures, from poets William Wordsworth and Samuel
Taylor Coleridge and painter JMW Turner, to celebrities such as Admiral Lord Nelson, who made the tour in
1802. Doing the Wye Tour soon became
de rigueur
among English high society.
Local people made good money providing crewed rowing boats for hire, which were equipped with canopies
and comfortable chairs and tables where their clients could paint or write, while inns and taverns cashed in on the
trade by providing food, drink and accommodation. It was normally a two-day trip, with an overnight stay in
Monmouth and stops at Tintern Abbey and Chepstow Castle, among others. In the second half of the 19th cen-
tury, with the arrival of the railways, the hundreds increased to thousands, and the tour became so commercialised
that it was no longer fashionable.
You can still do the Wye Tour, but these days it's a less glamorous, more DIY affair.
Activities
The classic Tintern and Return walk begins at the tourist office and heads upriver along
the Wye Valley path to Tintern Abbey, returning via Offa's Dyke Path on the eastern bank.