Killer Wales

Imagine Big Sur’s shimmering oceanscapes, and then replace that jammed highway with a heath-lined coastal path in King Arthur country. Add one of Europe’s best surf breaks and a local pastime called coasteering (think scrambling up rocks, caving, and cliff-jumping into a roiling, warmer-than-you’d-expect Irish Sea) and throw in genteel Welsh hospitality, and you have a wilder family getaway than you ever thought possible in the U.K. Head straight to St. Davids, on the far southwest coast, and sign up with carbon-neutral outfitter TYF—whose owner, Andy Middleton, invented coasteering 25 years ago—for a full day of sea-kayaking Pembrokeshire’s fickle surf and scrambling around scrap-heap rockfalls (from $160 per adult). Base yourself at Crug Glas, a B&B housed in a 13th-century farmhouse, with five-star local cuisine like Welsh sea bass in a seaweed reduction (from $187 per person), then take off with a pack and a tent for five days on the 879-mile Wales Coast Path. Wales is the first country to complete an end-to-end national coastal trail. Go now before the secret’s out.