The Bookshop ByThe Sea

Freya Blyth opened The Bookshop By The Sea in 2021 inside Aberystwyth's Victorian market hall on Market Street, after working as a librarian in Jerusalem and Manila. The shop sells new and second-hand books with an emphasis on Welsh writing, poetry and fiction for younger readers, alongside cards and small gifts. Blyth runs a regular programme of creative writing classes, poetry evenings, children's story times and author talks from the shop floor, building a following well beyond the town. The bookshop was named Independent Bookshop of the Year at the 2024 TikTok Book Awards and was a regional finalist for Wales in the British Book Awards' Independent Bookshop of the Year 2025, while Blyth herself won The Bookseller's Rising Star Award for her work building the business. It shares the market hall building with a second independent bookshop, part of a wider group of small traders under one Victorian roof in the town centre.