DISCOVER LAND OF GREEN HILLS AND SILVER SANDS

Carwyn Graves champions the hidden delights of Carmarthenshire, a place of crumbling castles and bustling market towns, empty beaches and tempting trails leading into gorgeous hill country

- Carwyn Graves 

Below, shimmering blue waves lap at miles of burnished sandbanks where three rivers empty into the sea. Above the beach opposite, a turreted Norman castle atop a tree-clad tumble of woodland and cliff. And all around me, nestled into the fold of a bluebell-strewn hillside, the final resting places in the graveyard of the early medieval church of St Ishmael. This is a place to be still and take it all in, right in the heart of rural and oft-overlooked Carmarthenshire, Sir Gâr.

For many people in Wales, Sir Gâr is where 'cefn gwlad' - the deep countryside - begins, and for modern tourists on their way to the fêted Pembrokeshire coast, Carmarthenshire is where the M4 and the mainline railway peter out. But this, the largest of Wales' traditional counties and one of its cultural strongholds, is a treasure trove of genuinely undiscovered delights stretching from castle-studded coastline to windswept moorland.

Survey the county from above- or from the driver's seat of a car - and you quickly twig that if anywhere deserves the moniker of endless green hills, this place does. As you cross the county from one end to the other in any direction, be prepared for a visual feast of ancient oak-ash woodlands along steep river valleys followed by broad vistas as you crest the hills, interspersed all the while by hillside chapels and pastel-colored market towns. On your travels, look on noticeboards and in local shops for information on male voice choir performances or 'cymanfa ganu', hymn-singing evenings, with these Welsh language musical traditions still strong in this proudly bilingual and community-oriented county. This is an intimate landscape, long famous for its mild climate, good produce and family farming tradition - and it has happily stayed that way.

CASTLES AND ESTUARIES: THE COAST