Ivy cloaks the stone walls of the venerable Waterloo Hotel at Bettws-y-Coed, North Wales — a Victorian coaching inn that became one of the most celebrated artist retreats in Britain after the Royal Academician David Cox made the village famous in the 1840s. This early Valentine's Series card, printed in Great Britain, captures the hotel's distinctive Gothic Revival turret and rambling ivy-covered façade along the quiet village road, with a single figure just visible near the entrance porch and a horse-drawn conveyance in the middle distance — a scene that would have been immediately recognizable to Edwardian tourists making the fashionable pilgrimage to the Conwy Valley. Bettws-y-Coed remained Wales's premier tourist village well into the 20th century, and the Waterloo Hotel (named for the famous 1815 battle, which occurred the year the original structure was built) still welcomes guests today. Card number 7711 from Valentine's Series; unused with blank reverse.