WILD WALES From the rush of downbill mountain biking to bikes along the roky coast, this small, often-overlooked corner of the U.K. holds outsize adventures.

LAST YEAR, the Welsh Affairs Committee noted in a House of Commons report that of the 41 million "international holidaymakers" who visited the U.K. in 2019, just 1 million went to Wales.

- Tom Vanderbilt

"Marketing of Wales must be stronger," the report noted, "with a clear theme devised to attract international tourists based on Wales's unique strengths and attractions."

Poor branding has long troubled the country. In her excellent 2023 memoir, The Long Field, Pamela Petro, an American who fell hard for Wales, notes that this small country, which "clung to the periphery of Europe and the margins of history," was often defined by what it was not. Starting with its very name: "Wales is actually an Anglo-Saxon word meaning 'place of the others' or 'place of the Romanized foreigners."" Britain's flag tells a similarly othering story: Wales is the sole U.K. country not represented on the Union Jack.

Even its most famous travel narrative George Borrow's 1862 tome Wild Wales-speaks to this exclusion. "Wales is a country interesting in many respects," the book opens, "and deserving of more attention than it has hitherto met with." Borrow, a polyglot Englishman and occasional travel writer, also just happened to lay out a strong brand identity: "Though not very extensive, it is one of the most picturesque countries in the world, a country in which Nature displays herself in her wildest, boldest, and occasionally loveliest forms."

I decided I would take my wife and daughter on a tour of Wales-a place I, like so many others, had never been to experience this lovely and bold nature. And so I began reading, with increasing excitement, of what was to come. I learned that almost a fifth of the country is covered by national parks (compared with roughly 3 percent of the U.S.), and there is chatter about "rewilding." Heights are a common theme: clambering up peaks, careening down ziplines, bombing down flowing mountain-bike tracks. But there is the ocean, too. Wales is the only country in the world with walking paths along its entire coastline. There are stunningly scenic, hardly crowded beaches, and any number of surf breaks.