I dreamt of the sea during lockdown. Confined indoors by day, at night I travelled to the edge of the world to visit a coastline of blue-green water and gull-wheeling cliffs. Magic radiated from the ancient hills. It’s only in recent weeks that I’ve realised my dreamscape was built from the best bits of Pembrokeshire.
As Wales prepares to reopen for tourism on July 11, we might expect to see a surge of visitors to the self-isolated county at its southwestern tip. Candy-coloured Tenby and St Davids are two of Wales’s big-hitter resorts. Rightly so: their cream teas, affable hospitality and stellar beaches give visitors a neat “best of British hols” package.
Yet beyond them is another Pembrokeshire. The wild, empty one that haunted my dreams. A place that gets under your skin and quietly captures your heart. It’s the Pembrokeshire the Welsh once called Gwlad Hud a Lledrith, “the land of mystery and enchantment”. You won’t find it by sat-nav, but you’ll know when you’ve arrived. I visited by accident last year.
I’d arrived in Pembrokeshire for a spot of nice accommodation, good food (the Welsh don’t shout about it, but their culinary scene now rivals Cornwall’s), a bit of walking, perhaps a surf. Beyond south-coast Tenby came the first hint that I was in for something more.
Forgoing fast A-roads, I took to lanes. They hadn’t been kidding when they’d painted “Araf, Slow” on the tarmac. Still, what was the hurry? Lichened stone walls and wildflowers replaced slip lanes and lay-bys. Routes bent and drooped, following the memories of older, more circuitous journeys.
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At Manorbier I was met by a broad wedge of sand spread before a crenellated castle like a supersized child’s toy (a tip: go at low tide). A few walkers were out with dogs. Surfers bobbed on a summer swell. There was no one else about. Not bad for early summer, five miles from Tenby.
The Pembrokeshire Coast Path — walk all 186 miles from St Dogmaels to Amroth through Britain’s only coastal national park if you fancy a fortnight’s social distancing — clambered over a headland towards what my map identified as Presipe beach. I’d never heard of it, which seemed as good a reason as any to investigate. After 20 minutes I was alone in a tiny bay unblemished by footprints. Fins of red rock punched from the sand like the backs of buried dragons.
Pembrokeshire excels in such moments of unexpected wonder. Later, ten miles west, I took a soul-singing walk along ragged cliffs, sea sparkling below, ravens tumbling overhead on the breeze. I stopped at St Govan’s Chapel, a Celtic hermitage wedged into a cleft. With its arched window filled with views of the sea, I could think of far worse places to retreat from the world. “Land of enchantment” indeed.
The “mystery” bit came at Freshwater West beach, a 20-minute drive further west. Why was a dinky fishing boat marooned in its car park? “Hiya,” a woman said from its window when I approached. “What can I get you?”
This was Café Mor (beachfood.co.uk). Inspired by seaweed harvested and dried on the beach for centuries, its founder, Jonathan Williams, launched an oddball food truck at the edge of Wales. The sun supplied the power. Fishermen and farms within a 20-mile radius provided produce: crab rolls, fresh lobster with laverbread and sea-salt butter, burgers and fillets of plaice with rock-samphire mayonnaise.
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National Trust restrictions meant they had to tow away the café on its trailer each night; every so often they shut because of a flat tyre. Honest, excellent, idiosyncratic, the set-up struck me as properly Welsh.
So, in its way, was my hotel. The Grove is a 26-room manor of laid-back luxe, all Welsh crafts, slate-clad bar and pleasingly creaky stairs half an hour back from Freshwater West, inland from Tenby. It does fine dining without pretension. “Dress code?” the assistant manager said, when I inquired about dinner in the Fernery restaurant. “Well, we prefer it if you don’t wear shorts or flip-flops, if that’s what you mean.” I’d tell you what you may eat, but the modern British menu changes too often. Suffice to say, it will be local, beautifully presented and delicious.
The estate is pillowed in the most gorgeous countryside near Narberth, no mean destination in its own right, with artsy boutiques and a local butcher’s cheek by jowl on a high street of brightly painted houses. You would think it would be mobbed. But no, the ten-mile drive north from Tenby proves too much for most visitors. Their loss, frankly. If you really can’t bear to forsake the coast, St Brides Spa hotel in Saundersfoot, Tenby’s sleepy neighbour, is a good option (rooms from £180 B&B, stbridesspahotel.com). Or go neo-rustic on a glamping houseboat at Dragonfly Camping, 15 minutes’ drive away (from £160 for two nights, dragonflycamping.co.uk).
A friend had recommended a visit to the Dale peninsula, on the other side of Milford Haven estuary. Most people only make the 45-minute schlep from Tenby to see puffins on Skomer Island. But if you’re not put off by a longish return trip to a dead-end peninsula — and the big gas refinery en route might also do it — you’ve found yourself one of the last best bits of coastal Pembrokeshire.
At Marloes Sands beach I took deep lungfuls of air, and then, at low tide, climbed to nuggety Gateholm Island to watch the sea shift from cobalt to pewter to silver as clouds billowed overhead. Watwick Bay was as pretty as Gateholm was exhilarating. A local story goes that the secret service cordoned it off so the royal family could have a beach day one afternoon in the 1960s. I couldn’t fault their choice — through a stunted woodland you emerge on to a Lilliputian paradise of white sand and sapphire water — although I doubt the security people allowed them to go for a pint at the Griffin on Dale harbour afterwards, which just proves that being a royal isn’t all it’s cracked up to be (griffininndale.co.uk).
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You shouldn’t avoid the famous destinations entirely. Checking out of the Grove, I moved on west towards St Davids. Officially it’s Britain’s smallest city. In reality it’s an overgrown village, population 1,800. Its answer to Trafalgar Square is an Enid Blyton fantasy of tea shops, galleries and shrimping nets propped in buckets outside gift shops. I was continuing a couple of miles to Whitesand Bay and the path to St Davids Head.
Who knows how long mystics have felt the pull of Wales’s Land’s End? Certainly since the Neolithic period, as revealed by the sizeable burial chamber at its tip called Coetan Arthur — the Welsh claim King Arthur as their own.
By late afternoon, the landscape became numinous. Yellow gorse flowers blazed like sparks from the sinking sun, the sea whispered.
I was staying ten miles north of St Davids in Trellyn Woodland Camping at Abercastle, on the coast. The owners, Kevin and Claire Bird, were pioneers of the glamping craze (and founders of the terrific Greener Camping Club, greenercamping.org) and their 11 pitches in copses and meadows remain among the most beautiful you’ll find, balancing eco-ethics with home comforts.
Entered by a pea-green round door, my yurt was as cosy as a hobbit home. I’d been in two minds about staying, to be honest. The north coast of Pembrokeshire is the bit that few tourists bother with; the drive to St Davids seems too long, the beaches and sights too few. Yet as well as protection within the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, its cliffs also have Site of Special Scientific Interest status, legally preserving not just the wildlife and geology, but their sense of wildness too.
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In the four days I was there, that edge-of-the-world beauty subtly wormed into my soul. After a surf at Whitesand I would return to the north coast for lunch: I recommend fish and chips from the Shed (theshedporthgain.co.uk) on Porthgain harbour followed by a pint at the Sloop Inn (sloop.co.uk).
One day I borrowed a kayak from Trellyn to paddle out from Abercastle bay to see the cliffs outside. I didn’t go far. I spent more time sitting than paddling, watching gulls drift like dandelion seeds. Another day, in Tregwynt village at its traditional weaver mill, I bought a rustic Welsh blanket that I couldn’t really afford, but, well, you know, holidays (melintregwynt.co.uk).
Most of all I ambled, strolling the coast path to wild Llyfn beach (all mine except for a seal that glared at me) and along a high route between Abercastle and Abermawr, above a land fragmenting into a sea of peacock colours.
I saved the best till last: an ascent up Garn Fawr, a National Trust-listed site of an Iron Age hillfort at Strumble Head nine miles north of Abercastle. The views at sunset were said to be otherworldly, but a storm was cartwheeling in from Ireland. I climbed up anyway, under a sky like a dishrag. At first I was disappointed. Then I realised that, like the scenery, the changeable weather lent Pembrokeshire soul. There’s a line in Seamus Heaney’s poem Postscript about “big soft buffetings [that] come at the car sideways and catch the heart off guard and blow it open”. That was it exactly.
I leant against the trig point at the summit looking over patchworked fields and a coast that seemed to be capsizing into the sea. Suddenly the sun exploded into the clear space between the sky and sea, and everything — sea and clouds, grass and heather, and gulls tumbling overhead — turned to gold.
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Which is how I accidentally discovered Pembrokeshire really is a land of mystery and enchantment. I expect most people who make it here will feel the same.
The Grove has B&B doubles from £160 (thegrove-narberth.co.uk) and plans to reopen in August, depending on government guidelines. Trellyn Woodland Camping has yurts from £130 a night (three nights minimum; trellyn.co.uk); it will open for glamping on July 11 and for tents at a later date. A seven-night multi-centre Best of Pembrokeshire walking holiday costs from £635pp, B&B (macsadventure.com). A 14-night trip along the entire Pembrokeshire Coast Path starts at £1,255pp, B&B (celtictrailswalkingholidays.co.uk).
3 MORE WILD WELSH BREAKS
South Snowdonia
When paths are full on Snowdon, routes remain clear in south Snowdonia. Base yourself in the handsome little town of Dolgellau, all grey stone and rumbling tractors, to climb Cadair Idris and cycle Wales’s loveliest, easiest route alongside the Mawddach Estuary. The coast is close, too. Aberdovey is a pretty beach resort yet to be gussied up for tourism: get ice creams and crab lines and bait from Dai’s Shed on the quay. Stay at the travel writer Jan Morris’s favourite small hotel, Y Meirionnydd (B&B doubles from £85; themeirionnydd.com; opens July 17).
Cardigan
The bit just up from Pembrokeshire brims with hopeful crafty enterprises, farmers and brilliant beaches: Penbryn, lovely Llangrannog and semi-secret Traeth Bach are excellent. Mwnt is magic for seascapes. It’s a place that teases out the hippy in everyone: canoe down the Teifi River — the soulful alternative to Hay-on-Wye’s popular paddle with shops afterwards in Newcastle Emlyn — and forest-bathe in one of the druids’ sacred oak woods, Pengelli Forest. Stay in self-catering Crog Lofts at Fforest (two nights for four from £230; coldatnight.co.uk; opens July 13).
Llyn Peninsula
Welcome to a land of Welsh culture, a tethered island of conical mountains, pretty fields, cliffs and white beaches (our picks are Porth Oer and Porth Ysgo). While the Cheshire set covet £150,000 beach huts at Abersoch, the soul of the Llyn (roughly pronounced “t-leen”) is better understood in places such as Aberdaron, spiritual home of poets (including the former village pastor RS Thomas) and pilgrims to Bardsey. Stay at the ten-room country house Plas Bodegroes (B&B doubles from £150; bodegroes.co.uk; plans to open late July).
Where’s your favourite spot in Wales? Let us know in the comments below
