Here is my latest feature for Telegraph Travel, part of the Great British seaside series.

I visited Portmeirion, staying in the village overnight for a taste of Clough’s architectural folly without the crowds.

Read on for top tips about how to make the most of your visit, plus a heads up about plans for the upcoming 150th anniversary.

Here’s a taster of my article:

It’s known as ‘The Village’.

The pastel-coloured facades and magpie-like collection of buildings provided the psychedelic backdrop to the 1960s TV series, The Prisoner and offered a haven for artists and musicians from the Jazz Age to the Sixties.

The author Noel Coward wrote his comic play Blithe Spirit here in 1941 and The Beatles were regular visitors after their manager took a lease on Gatehouse.

But, most of all, Portmeirion is the creative vision of its founder, the architect Clough Williams-Ellis.

He bought a plot of land on the Snowdonia coast in 1925 and devoted his life to his Italianate folly, working with nature to create something unique.

The “home for fallen buildings” was constructed in two phases until just before his death in 1978, salvaging old buildings from demolition in an early take on upcycling.

The village still chuckles with his wry humour in its design.

Celebrations for Portmeirion’s centenary year are now in progress with plans for a 1920s-style house party at Hotel Portmeirion to commemorate the Easter 1926 opening and a series of open-air concerts to keep alive Clough’s desire for the village to bring pleasure to others — as it did to him.

Today, Portmeirion is a staple of North Wales daytrips but, despite the coach groups, Clough’s words, from his book, Portmeirion: The Place and its Meaning, still hold true:

“My main objective, that of architectural and environmental propaganda, is by no means obscured.”

Read the full feature via Telegraph Travel, Inside the most bizarre seaside village in Britain.

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