To approach Llandeilo via the A40 from Carmarthen means missing the iconic pastel-coloured cottages meandering up the hill from the bridge over the River Tywi.
But perhaps the drive up the Tywi valley instead- where the river snakes its way towards Carmarthen in lazy looping S-bends almost meeting the road in places - is a more impressive route towards what is now a well-established destination town. On a day which started wet but promises sun later, the blue-grey peaks of the foothills of the western Brecon Beacons rise up in the background and the jagged ruins of Dryslwyn Castle pierce through the haze in the foreground.
It feels like you're heading into the deep heart of Carmarthenshire, a land steeped in history, legends and mystery. Llandeilo - a collection of quaint and traditional buildings so typical of a Welsh market town - is fast becoming a rural hub for independent shops, antiques and interiors, and particularly good coffee.
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In fact, I made a beeline for Diod, a smart coffee and wine shop that wouldn't look out of place in any posh city suburb and where most customers ordered their brunch in Welsh. Ask any of the locals and Llandeilo's a lovely place to live they'll tell you. In fact, when it comes to the best places to live in Wales, Llandeilo is the top of the tree, according to the Sunday Times Best Places to Live list.
"The independent shops and cafés in Llandeilo's tiny centre are full of the good things in life," said the Times judges. "Its colourful houses are a delightful backdrop and the surrounding countryside is full of magical places to explore." The locals don't disagree but they were all a bit surprised to be marked out as something special.
"It's a time warp, a step back in time and people have time for each other," said Diana Cremona behind the counter in Eve's Toy Shop, which won best Independent toy shop in the UK in 2017. Diana, originally from Canada, moved to Llandeilo for love and eventually ended up working for the shop's owner Jane Rees. She's never thought of Llandeilo as a "significant tourist trap", she said somewhat surprised.
"It's an agricultural town, there's a lot of loyalty, it's cosy, it's unblemished, untouched, it's beautiful and creative and it's unpretentious," she added in her hypnotically soft voice with an ever-so-soft Canadian twang.
But how does one decide which town is the ultimate best? What sets Llandeilo apart from Narberth say, or Usk or Abergavenny or any other of those quaint market towns in Wales we hear about all the time? Doesn't it all sound, well, just a little bit pretentious?
There's a myriad of boutique shops along the quaint King's Street and the main Rhosmaen Street featuring iconic names like Toast - a high-end brand created in a farmhouse in Wales in 1997 which has gone on to more than 20 stores nationwide. It's not unheard of for Judi Dench to pop in, nor Damien Lewis or Griff Rhys Jones, we hear.
There's undoubtedly a bohemian edge to Llandeilo and its surroundings - something which attracted many artists and creative types seeking the slower pace of life in the late-80s and 90s. But at its heart, Llandeilo is a rural town, surrounded by agriculture and the old wealth associated with the neighbouring estates. There has to be something though to explain why it's managed to buck the trend of dying high streets.
Tracey Kindred has owned Heavenly chocolatiers on Rhosmaen Street, alongside her husband Paul, for 18 years. She arrived in the town initially selling just ice cream, having trained under an Italian gelato chef, but soon realised it rained more than she anticipated. The switched-on businesswoman learned how to work with chocolate and before long, she was selling artisan chocolate creations too.
In that time, Llandeilo changed from a town with just a few shops to one where new ones are opening all the time, she said: "It was mostly estate agents and charity shops when we first opened," she said. "The high street was struggling. After we opened, within two years we saw quite a lot of new shops coming to the area and more people moving in from away. Then it kind of took on its own momentum."
It's April so her shelves are packed to bursting with cellophane-wrapped Easter chocolates and there's a hive of activity in her two kitchens at the back. There's a steady stream of customers through the door, most of whom head straight for the ice cream counter.
Having been a city girl until she met her husband, Tracey moved to Llandeilo when they married. Straightaway she "absolutely loved it," she said with a sparkle in her eye. "The people and the environment, the walks and the castle and the rurality of it all," she listed. "There's something unique about the attitude of people in Llandeilo. For such a small rural market town, it's got a very cosmopolitan outlook on things."
The wide geographical appeal of Llandeilo is mentioned by nearly everyone we speak to. Brita Rogers, 70, has been organising the Llandeilo antique fair for six years. It's the longest-running fair in Wales she said as we caught her on the street dropping leaflets into the shops and she's grown it from around 70 people to more than 500 coming through the doors.
"People come from all over," she said. "Cardiff, Swansea, Bristol. I think it's the mix of shops, it has the right blend. People are looking for an experience which is unique."
"There's a quaintness to Llandeilo," she added. As if to prove her point, Robert and Jacqueline Bellew walk past at that very moment with their two sons William and Harry, and William's girlfriend Margaux Verheecke. The family is celebrating a 35th wedding anniversary and two birthdays and had booked a cottage nearby because it "looked nice", they said.
Visiting from Bedford, they had set a whole day aside for exploring the town with coffee at Ginhaus, a deli, gin bar, restaurant and coffee shop on Market Street, to start. Robert said: "There's plenty to do around here- the Brecon Beacons aren't far and there's good cycling too."
There's a sense of history in the very fabric of Llandeilo which sets it apart from other towns. Within a short drive away are the three castles of Carreg Cennen, Dryslwyn and Dinefwr and the Aberglasney and National Botanic gardens are in striking distance too. A sense of wilderness is never far away, even on the main street. Walking towards the top of town and the crest of Rhosmaen Street, the rolling hills beyond turn from lush green to blue as they merge with the horizon to the north. You get the sense that Llandeilo is as much a product of the environment as it is the strength of the community which is determined to retain the independent feel and see off the big-name chains.
It's not isolated - Ammanford is only seven miles away and Carmarthen only 15 - but Llandeilo is where the M4 runs out. Many visitors come as they're passing through on their way to the more touristy Welsh coast - Ceredigion's Aberaeron to the north and Pembrokeshire's Tenby to the west. But if Pembrokeshire is Little England, then perhaps Carmarthenshire is Little Wales - a patchwork of Welshness still untainted by tourism - and Llandeilo epitomises all this perfectly.
It would be disingenuous not to mention the Llandeilo bypass - or lack thereof. There's no getting away from the fact that no amount of window dressing can distract from the narrow pavements and the regular heavy traffic forcing cars and pedestrians alike to pause as they go about their business.
Bridge Street, which becomes the town's narrow thoroughfare Rhosmaen Street, is also the A483 trunk road between Swansea and Manchester. HGVs, lorries and tractors pass through in a constant stream of traffic, air pollution and noise. Locals have been patiently waiting fifty years for a bypass to be built but those plans were shelved by the Welsh Government in 2021. Click here to read what they said about the shelved plans when we visited the town last summer.
Benedict Vaughan-Morris, a bright and cheery man behind the counter at The Little Welsh Dresser offers us his thoughts on it all. He grew up in Llandeilo, going to school at nearby Tre-Gib before moving away to Cardiff for several years. His grandparents owned the shop he currently works from and he'd always had aspirations to one day come back and start his own business.
Given an ultimatum by his dad about being "now or never", Benedict jumped in with both feet and set up his business initially selling chalk paints before adding homewares to his shop.
"I always had that passion to do something," he said. "In truth, there's not a lot of employment around here so I thought why not make my own." The 40-year-old lives in the town with his wife and young children and agreed it's a "really nice" place to call home.
"There's something special about Wales and there's something special about Llandeilo," he said, his grandparents looking down on him from a black and white photo on the wall. His parents still live in Llandeilo. He added: "It's a relaxing way of life here. It's perfect for someone like me with a young family."
As for the bypass, he's resigned to the fact it's probably not going to happen. But Benedict thinks there could be other, better options, like a one-way system or traffic diversions, and is acutely aware of how important passing traffic is to keep Llandeilo alive and relevant. There are some much-discussed options to alleviate the traffic problem - read what they are here.
For now, Benedict is looking forward to a busy holiday season after his busiest ever summer in 2021: "Llandeilo has enough of a name that people are coming here to come here," he said. "They see it's a beautiful area, with the National Trust and Cadw sites nearby, so it's got enough of a pull. This summer will be busy too I think."
Looking beyond the heavy lorries and their toxic fumes, there are the colourful houses with echoes of the seaside town of Aberaeron further north- a legacy of the 1996 Eisteddfod when people were encouraged to paint their houses. It makes Llandeilo instantly recognisable and very Instagram-friendly with the stone bridge arcing over the mighty Tywi, which happens to be the longest river in all of Wales.
The A40 skirts the northern edge of the Brecon Beacons before running through Llandeilo and on to Carmarthen. For those taking a day trip from the east, it's a greenery-fringed scenic alternative to the busier Heads of the Valleys road just to the south.
Increasingly Llandeilo is gaining enough of a reputation to be worth a visit in its own right. And why not? It's the perfect place to mooch about and indulge in coffees and buns and bowls of cawl afterwards for a thoroughly Welsh day out. It's possible that some of the shop fronts are looking a bit more tired than they have done in the past, but we can forgive a few empty premises following the pandemic.
Many visitors make a beeline for Peppercorn, a stalwart of the shopping scene in Llandeilo run by owners Gloria and Chris Vaughan-Roberts. The cookware specialist shop is packed from floor to ceiling with every kitchen gadget imaginable- from potato peelers to specialist coffee machines. I feel like I could disappear and spend an hour in there.
"It's become a destination," said Gloria about Llandeilo's popularity. "It wasn't when we first opened but now there's more than just a few shops to visit. Many more lovely shops have opened and there's a lot of independents."
There have been mutterings of a Sainsburys or a Lidl over the years, but "we fought them off", she added. "People are passionate about living here and try to keep it that way," she said.
It's clear that the Llandeilo community is the beating heart of this quaint town and their proactive business sense has stopped it from becoming all too twee - this is a working market town after all.
At the other end of town on Station Road, Marlene Davies is manning her shop, Davies & Co, which specialises in recycled furniture. She's been trading for seven years - the first four in Llandovery and the last three in Llandeilo - and arrived in Llandeilo at the beginning of lockdown.
"It's a nice town and I think what's especially nice is it's all independent family-run shops," said Marlene. "I think that seems to be a bit of a forgotten thing but people like to shop small and local and get that personal touch." Her customers come from all over - London, Yorkshire, Ireland, Bristol and many arrive on the train, having travelled on the very picturesque Heart of Wales line, determined to make a return visit.
Its success is largely down to the fact "it's right in the middle of Wales". Marlene added: "It's a place where you can easily visit lots of other places too. It's surrounded by beautiful countryside with a really rich history of castles.
"It's got a real city feel. Everybody seems to be on the same wavelength. There's the locals who have been there for years and retain that tradition and there's businesses who can see the potential of the town. For some reason it gels and really works well."
"Everybody is there to help each other out," she added. "For Llandeilo to work, we all have to pull together."
Do you live in Llandeilo? Is it your favourite place to visit for a day trip or long weekend? Tell us what you think in the comments section below.
