With the UK government’s ridiculous foreign travel policy appearing to have no end in sight, even with a high vaccination and low death rate from Covid, holding out for an overseas trip had been depressing me. Every time I’ve thought I might be able to escape to somewhere in Europe or that one of my tours might go ahead, the government just put another obstacle in the way.
I had been doing temporary work for a consultant psychiatrist since December and hadn’t had any time off since Christmas. Even then, due to lockdowns and cold weather, I couldn’t go anywhere. The last time I had had a few day trips out in the Yorkshire Dales was in September and now I desperately needed a holiday.
The UK was finally opening up domestically from mid May. Scotland looked a bit dodgy as the devolved government there always took a more cautious approach, so I decided to shelve my plans to visit Sutherland and the Orkneys for the time being and I’d been somewhere in every English county. That just left looking west to Wales. I have travelled in Wales a few times. I’ve been to North Wales numerous times on tour as well as taking a couple of short breaks in that area. I’d also been to mid Wales once taking in Hay-on-Wye and the Brecon Beacons. However, I’d never been to South Wales and more specifically to Pembrokeshire. This seemed an ideal opportunity to explore that area.
I was well aware that a lot of people were holidaying domestically this year, either because they were worried about catching Covid or, in my case, that they were worried about the government’s ever changing foreign travel policy that could mean having to find a flight home at short notice to avoid quarantine and booking numerous Covid tests despite being double jabbed. No thank you! The downside of the huge demand for domestic accommodation was that the prices had gone up. I was desperate to get away but not desperate enough to pay thousands of pounds for a week in Tenby which could go towards my next overseas trip, which I was hoping might go ahead at the end of the year.
June has always been my favourite month to travel, but my search for accommodation in Tenby was fruitless, there was nothing available in June at all. I decided to take it back a couple of weeks, so I would still be in the bracket of lockdown eased and tourist attractions open and my luck was in. I found a fairly inexpensive guesthouse a 10 minute walk from the seafront and town centre with breakfast and free parking. A 10 minute walk into town was a small price to pay for the convenience of free parking. One click and I was booked. My mood instantly lifted. I was going to spend the last week of May in Pembrokeshire.
I arrived in Tenby at 6 o’clock on Sunday evening. I was very pleased with my room at Hammonds Park Guesthouse. It was the only room available, so I booked it, but it was a large room with a four poster bed and a separate sofa. I had a bath as well as a shower in my bathroom. And a sea view! I took a few photos of my room before it became a mess with my things all over. Then decided that I needed to have a wander round after driving for around 6 hours, I was going to explore Tenby.
I followed the road down the hill that led to Tenby North Beach. It was a sight I was going to become very familiar with over the next week. At the bottom of the hill is Tenby North Beach. It was low tide so I went down to the beach and had a walk along it. There was a big rock on the beach which is actually an island at high tide, although I wasn’t aware of how far the tide came in at this stage as this was my first time in Tenby.
I was struck by what a colourful town Tenby was, with all the different coloured houses close to the seafront. It was like St John’s in Newfoundland. I took quite a few photos of the coloured buildings, the view of Tenby Castle from the beach and then went into the town. The town was a reasonable size and there were lots of restaurants throughout the town, all of them open now. It looked like there was a very good choice of places to eat out. I hadn’t intended to eat out all week, but it was looking a much more attractive proposition now there seemed to be so many places with good menus around. I hadn’t been on holiday for 15 months, it would be nice if I could go and eat out in the evening.
Tenby has a town wall and several town gates which you see as you walk around the town. There are plenty of archways and there are even some restaurants that are set into the town walls. After wandering around for a few hours and getting to know the layout of the town, I went back to my guesthouse ready for the next day.
This afternoon I was expecting my friend, Alan, who has featured in one or two of my other posts, most notably the Pingo Trail in Norfolk, to arrive in Tenby to join me exploring Pembrokeshire for a few days. He was planning to arrive just before 2pm to check into his bed and breakfast, so I decided to further explore Tenby that morning.
I walked down the hill to the North Beach and then skirted round by the harbour and made my way onto Tenby South Beach. The South Beach is much longer than the North Beach. I made my way down some very slippery steps to get access to the beach and then started to walk further south. There were morning showers expected, some heavier than others, so I didn’t walk too far along the beach as the clouds looked pretty ominous, then made my way back.
There’s a huge island on the South Beach called St Catherine’s Island and it has a fort on top of it. St Catherine’s is an island at high tide, but at low tide you can walk to it. At low tide you can practically walk around St Catherine’s Island and there are some caves under the island. I had a short walk into the caves but I didn’t stay in them for long. They were a bit dark and wet, as you might expect from sea caves!
The timing of the tides this week meant that the island was accessible from the beach and you could go and have a look around the fort. I decided not to do that today, I would wait until Wednesday morning and then Alan could come with me.
I then made my way up to have a look at Tenby Castle. I say castle, there’s not much of the castle left now, just one small tower that presumably would have originally been part of the keep. I took photos of the castle and the view from the castle. I was interested to see that at low tide a tractor went onto the beach and pushed a walkway out into the sea that acted as a boat dock so that people could get on and off the boats that sailed over to Caldey Island.
On Wednesday morning at low tide we walked onto the South Beach and made our way to St Catherine’s Island to visit the fort. St Catherine’s Fort was built in 1867 during the Napoleonic Wars as one of the coastal fortifications although it was never used in any of the Napoleonic conflicts.
It was sold in 1907 and subsequently sold on to the wealthy Windsor-Richards family who had made their fortune in iron and steel. Whilst in the ownership of this rich family, the fort was decorated like a stately home with carpets and tapestries, huge fireplaces and hunting trophies. The house was sold as part of the estate of one of the Windsor-Richards family in 1940 and then sold to a Tenby businessman in 1962 who turned the fort into a zoo in the late 1960s. In 1979 all the zoo animals were moved to other locations and the fort was then left derelict. So that’s a brief history of the island and the fort as it is now.
Enter the St Catherine’s Island and Fort Team, a group of volunteers who decided to take over this derelict fort and try and clean it up for visitors to enjoy. The entrance fee is a very modest £5 which all goes towards the upkeep of the island and it is well worth supporting this project. The volunteers are very enthusiastic, knowledgeable and passionate about this little tidal island and its fort and have done what they can to make the experience of visiting the island an immensely enjoyable one. I have to admit, much to my surprise, this was one of my highlights, not only of Tenby, but of all of the places I visited during my time in Pembrokeshire. It was a fantastic way to spend an hour or so.
The island is at the mercy of the tides, so if it’s high tide in the middle of the day, the island is inaccessible and is closed. Luckily, this week, it was low tide in the middle of the day, so we went to check it out mid morning. There was a volunteer waiting at the bottom of the steps that had been cut into the rock to take our money and answer any questions, including about Wally the Walrus, who had been quite the celebrity in Tenby recently, a young male walrus who had swum down from Greenland and seemed to like Tenby. He had been causing havoc trying to get into lifeboats or blocking the boat slipway, but everyone in Tenby loved to see him. He had now gone to Padstow which I was very disappointed to hear. I would have loved to see a walrus in the wild. Especially Wally who had made quite a name for himself in Tenby with his antics.
We climbed the steps cut into the rock and reached a wire bridge that linked two parts of the island so you could get to the fort. I crossed the bridge and had several photos taken on it with the beach below, as the bridge was made entirely of wire including the piece you walked across. Once across the bridge there was a view from every direction including towards the castle, the South Beach, the North Beach, Caldey Island and up to the fort itself.
The fort was open and had a drawbridge and an impressive door to get inside. Let me warn you, the volunteers have not managed to restore the fort to its glory days of tapestries and hunting trophies. You can only see one floor and it all looks quite damp, but the volunteers have made such an effort to give visitors a good experience. There are two thrones as you go inside and a table with a crown and a tiara on them, so the volunteer at the fort entrance came in and volunteered to take a photo of us sitting resplendently on the thrones, Alan wearing the crown and me wearing the tiara.
There wasn’t a huge amount to see, but the volunteers have put together a 20 minute slideshow that tells you all about the history of the island and the fort, including why it was built and what subsequently happened to it, up to it being abandoned after being Tenby Zoo, but with some random amusing slides thrown in to keep your interest. There was a mock up of what the island looked like during the Jurassic Age with dinosaurs drawn in and the photo credit went to Terry Dactil…
There were also some photos of the appalling state the fort was in when the volunteers took over to try and clean it up. It had been a paradise for vandals and graffiti artists and rubbish and rubble was everywhere when the volunteers came in. The volunteers were keen to carry on with their work and expand the clean up and hopefully open up the upper level, but it was a slow process and they only had visitor entrance fee money to pay for this. It is never going to look like the inside of a stately home again, but I would thoroughly recommend you invest £5 and an hour of your time to check out the fort and support its restoration. I loved it. A real highlight of Tenby.
I had a couple of things to do before I left Tenby. Firstly I had to go to the glass shop. I love glassware and have items from all over the world. The glass workshop in Tenby had been producing glass figures of Wally the Walrus and since I hadn’t been fortunate enough to see him here I decided I would buy a glass figure of him which would help me remember my holiday in Tenby and the holiday where I almost got to see a walrus! I couldn’t resist the miniature glass teapot in the glass shop, so that came home with me as well.
I was also determined to walk the length of the South Beach before I departed. I ended my holiday in Pembrokeshire as I started it, on my own and whereas last Sunday evening I had walked along the North Beach, this Friday evening I walked along the South Beach. The South Beach in Tenby is huge. The tide was out far enough for me to be able to walk the entire length until it reached its natural end.
The tide was coming in now, I wasn’t going to be able to walk right up to St Catherine’s Island to come off the South Beach, but I had plenty of time to get off the beach from the ramp near the fish restaurant and back into town before heading to my guesthouse. It was a pleasant, relaxing, relatively peaceful walk and now I felt I’d done everything Tenby had to offer.
Tenby had been a good choice as a holiday destination, an attractive seaside town with plenty to do, good beaches, some nice places to eat and lots of places to visit in the vicinity. It’s a long way from anywhere, so if you do visit, make sure you stay for a few days to make the most of it, you won’t want to be making this journey too often, but it is definitely worth 5 days of your time.
I travelled to Tenby in May 2021.
It is free to visit the exterior of Tenby Castle ruins.
St Catherine’s Fort is £5 to enter and is open when St Catherine’s Island is accessible at low tide. All entrance fees go towards further restoration of the fortress.
I bought my glassware from Gift of Glass in the town centre. All items in the shop are handmade in the glassblowing workshop in Tenby.
I stayed at Hammonds Park Guesthouse in Tenby, a 10 minute walk from the town centre with free parking and breakfast included. A large double room with a four poster bed and sofa and bathroom with bath and separate shower and a sea view cost approximately £55 per night. I booked through Expedia.
Read about my other adventures in Wales