If you’re craving a deeper connection with nature, consider a trip to Wales. This compact country packs a punch when it comes to the great outdoors, with plunging valleys, craggy cliffs, rolling dunes and more. It’s the ideal staycation destination for Brits, and a lesser-known marvel for visitors to the UK who want to escape the crowds.

Boots at the ready? Here’s how to have a wild, windswept wellness adventure of your own in underrated Wales.

Coastal walking

Think Wales is just all green hills, rain and sheep? It’s a forgivable assumption. Even I, a proud South Walian, could not believe my eyes as I stepped foot on Newborough Beach in Anglesey. A pancake-flat bay and crescent of sand trimmed with Corsican pines – under an uncharacteristically blue sky of Caribbean island standards – had me questioning whether I was even in my homeland at all.

The 125-mile Anglesey Coastal Path, 95% of which falls within an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, opened in 2006. The Wales Coastal Path officially launched six years later, encompassing some of the UK’s most beautiful beaches, historic castles and cultural sights and making Wales the first country in the world to have a footpath hugging its entire coastline (England’s coastal path is due to open in 2020).

Who needs the Caribbean when this is on your doorstep? © Emma Sparks / Lonely Planet

There’s hiking here for all abilities, with some sections suitable for prams and wheelchairs, and for those who – quite rightly – come for the famed mountains of Snowdonia and Brecon, there’s plenty to challenge you along the coast too: tackling the 186-mile Pembrokeshire portion of the path alone for example, with its 35,000ft of ascents and descents, is supposedly the equivalent of climbing Everest.