Photo: Mike McBey (CC BY 2.0)
A self-guided audio tour of the village Clough Williams-Ellis composed on a peninsula above the Dwyryd estuary from 1925, as a series of carefully arranged pictures. It starts at Castell Deudraeth, the castellated Victorian house on the drive, and passes under the Gatehouse, with Hans Feibusch's painted ceiling, and Bridge House into the village. Then the Pantheon he built to cure the village's dome deficiency, the Bristol Colonnade, carried stone by stone from a bathhouse near Bristol, the Piazza that replaced a tennis court in 1966, the Gothic Pavilion and the Gloriette with its painted windows, and the Campanile of 1928, built partly with stones from a twelfth-century castle. The Round House was Number Six's home in The Prisoner, and Hercules Hall holds a Jacobean ceiling saved from Emral Hall. It ends at the hotel and the ketch set in the quay, and in the seventy acres of the Gwyllt.
13 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 20 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 2 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Castell Deudraeth.
The Gatehouse, Bridge House, The Pantheon (the Dome), Bristol Colonnade, The Piazza, The Gothic Pavilion, The Gloriette, The Campanile, The Round House and the 1960s television series, The Town Hall (Hercules Hall), The Hotel and the quay.
The Gwyllt and the dog cemetery.
Built to fix Portmeirion's 'dome deficiency', with a Norman Shaw fireplace from Dawpool Hall on its front.
The front of an eighteenth-century bathhouse at Arnos Court, numbered stone by stone and rebuilt here in 1957.
The tower of 1928 that anchors the village's skyline, with a clock from a demolished London brewery.
The circular cottage of 1958 to 1959 that was Number Six's home in The Prisoner, now the Prisoner Shop.
A Jacobean banqueting hall rebuilt from Emral Hall, with the Labours of Hercules on its plaster ceiling.
The mansion that opened as a hotel in 1926 to pay for the village, with a Breton ketch set into the quay.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 13 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 13 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Portmeirion — Clough Williams-Ellis's Italianate Village, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
13 narration points, including Castell Deudraeth, The Gatehouse, Bridge House, The Pantheon (the Dome) and Bristol Colonnade. That is about 23 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~2½ hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 13 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.