Category: Wales

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

Pembrokeshire Coast Path

The Cathedral City of St Davids

Caldey Island

Caldey Island is an island off the coast of Tenby and easily accessible from the mainland by boat.  I had seen it on the Travel Show years ago and it had stuck in my mind.  When I first decided to go to Tenby I didn’t know whether Caldey Island would warrant a visit, I wasn’t sure how much there would be to do there.  However, after doing some research, it seemed that Caldey Island was definitely worth a day trip, especially if it was a nice day. 

Thursday had the best weather forecast for the week, sunny, warm, little chance of rain, so that seemed to be the ideal day to go.  There were several options for Caldey Island.  There were plenty of companies that offered boats from Tenby where you could sail around the island on a boat tour with commentary, but not land on the island, but there was also one company that offered a boat transfer to Caldey Island, you landed there and spent as long exploring the island as you wanted and then came back in your own time.  And this is what I chose to do.

As we were leaving from Tenby, going back to Tenby and the cars were going to be parked up all day, a day on Caldey Island was also the ideal opportunity to have a picnic on the beach with a bottle of wine.  So with a rucksack full of wine, cheese and French bread, we went to the harbour to buy a ticket for the boat across to the island. 

As the tide was out, we were going to be leaving from Tenby South Beach.  The tractor was on the beach with the walkway attached so that passengers could get onto the boat.  It was a pleasant 20 minute ride across to Caldey Island.  We landed right next to the one public beach on the island and where we would have our picnic later and set off to explore.

Caldey Island has a working monastery where monks make chocolate and perfumes and sell them in shops on the island.  As well as this there is a lighthouse and a few hiking trails across the island.  My plan had been to walk the perimeter of the island, but this isn’t actually possible, some of the land is out of bounds and you have to stick to the designated hiking trails, but these do cover a good portion of the island and took up several hours of the day. 

We started out by walking from the boat dock to the village where there were several shops, a post office and the huge abbey.  As with so many things on this trip, in TBC (Time Before Covid) it was possible to do a tour of part of the abbey, which is still home to around 20 Cistercian monks, but it was completely closed up now, which was disappointing.  Instead we pressed on towards the lighthouse. 

There is a turning before you get to the lighthouse to the Old Priory which is now in ruins.  We had a brief look around the ruins and the attached St Illtyd’s Church with its leaning spire and then discovered the chocolate factory behind.  It was relatively early in the day, so we only had to wait a few minutes for a couple to come out before we went inside.  They made milk, plain and white chocolate as well as fudge and you could smell the chocolate as soon as you went inside as they were busy making some that day.  After a purchase and a chat to the lady in the shop who recommended that we do the longer coastal walk from the lighthouse which takes you around the northeastern coastline of the island, we headed up to the lighthouse.

The lighthouse on the north side of the island was closed to the public. The lighthouse was the last to be powered by acetylene gas until it was modernised in November 1997 and is now monitored and controlled from a centre in Harwich at the opposite side of Great Britain.

We continued on the only reasonably long hiking trail on Caldey Island. It follows the northeastern quarter of the island’s coastline with a certain amount of elevation gain and then cuts back overland to the Old Priory.  This shore of the island is very dramatic and rugged with high cliffs that fell straight into the sea.  As we walked around the northeastern edge of Caldey Island the scenery got more impressive with a mist adding a certain mysterious element to the tall cliffs and waves crashing against the rocks below. There is no option to continue following the perimeter of the island, it’s completely blocked off and the beach, which is illustrated on the map, has no public access.  The southeastern part of Caldey Island is completely off limits. 

However, we had had a reasonable walk along this hiking trail and after reaching the Old Priory again we were fairly close to the village.  It was approaching lunchtime, so this seemed to be an appropriate time to head down to the beach where the boat had docked, find a quiet spot and enjoy some bread, cheese and wine.

The beach along the southern shore of Caldey Island is fairly large, so we were able to find a spot for ourselves to sit down, enjoy the view back over to Tenby on the mainland and relax with an alcoholic lunch.  It was a beautiful and sunny day, so it was ideal for a picnic.  We opened our bottle of wine and sat sipping Chardonnay and ate French crusty bread and the Welsh Caerphilly cheese I’d bought yesterday. 

There were lots of people queuing to take the boat back to Tenby, but no boats appeared for the whole time we were eating our picnic, which seemed rather strange, but we didn’t think carefully enough about to realise there was a problem.  We later discovered that the tractor that was used for passengers to embark at low tide had broken down, so there was no way of getting people back to the mainland, they just had to wait for the tide to come in so that the boat could dock at the jetty.  That is something to bear in mind if you do go over to Caldey Island for the day.  As well as the last crossing  back to the mainland being at around 5pm, if there are any problems at low tide, you could have a bit of a wait.  By the time we were ready to go back to Tenby later in the afternoon, the tide was high enough for the boats to dock again, but we still had a bit of a wait as the queue went down. 

However, after our picnic, we headed back to the village and decided to do a bit more walking, this time in the western part of the island that we hadn’t explored yet. 

Most people who go over to Caldey Island don’t seem to venture very far.  Most seem to hang around the beach and the village, a few will walk to the lighthouse and even fewer will do the northeastern coast walk that we had done that morning. 

It appeared that not many people bothered exploring the western area of Caldey either.  This fairly short route takes you closer to the abbey, which was when I discovered it was closed because of Covid, and around to the small Church of St David’s. 

This is only a very small church, but it is open so you can have a look inside and see the two famous stained glass windows, the fish window and the tree of life window. Both were designed by monk, Theodore Baily in around 1922. The three branches on the Tree of Life represent the natural, the spiritual and the divine.   

From there you can take the short woodland walk to the viewpoint across to the Gower Peninsula. This Bay is known as Paul Jones Bay named after the 18^th century pirate who supposedly hid his treasure somewhere near this spot.  I didn’t find it! You get a beautiful view over to the distant Gower Peninsula from this lookout. It’s a pretty deserted location, we certainly didn’t see many people bothering to explore this part of the island, but it’s a short distance from the abbey, it’s not a long walk and it’s one of only two circular walks on the island, so if you’ve made the effort to come across to the island and disembark the boat, I’d recommend this hiking trail, as well as the longer one around the northeastern quarter of Caldey.

And now we really had seen everything on Caldey, so short of walking around again, we headed back to the beach to wait for the boat to take us back to the mainland.  Once the monastery is open again when the Covid restrictions are removed, there will be even more to do, so it’s well worth a day of your time if you’re having a holiday in Tenby.  However, it wouldn’t be pleasant in the rain as there isn’t a lot of shelter and the visibility would be so poor you wouldn’t be able to see anything from the viewpoints, so make sure you choose a sunny day for your visit.

I travelled to Tenby in May 2021.

Information on Caldey Island including a map, can be found on its website.

Caldey Island is a 20 minute boat ride from Tenby. Return tickets cost £14. The island is open from Monday to Saturday from May to September. Caldey Island is closed on Sunday. Tickets are available from the harbour. Embarcation point depends on the tide, you will be informed of this when you purchase your ticket. Advance reservations are not required.

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

Pembrokeshire Coast Path

The Cathedral City of St Davids

Tenby

One of the things on my to do list in Pembrokeshire was to visit the tiny city of St Davids in the far southwest corner of the county.  The city has a famous cathedral, hence its city status, and the ruins of the Bishop’s Palace next door. 

The restrictions had lifted enough for me to visit these attractions now, although it was stressed on the websites that you needed to book tickets in advance to be allowed entry.  It was free entrance to St David’s Cathedral, but you still needed to reserve tickets.  I had been checking the website since the previous week and there was always plenty of availability so it wasn’t necessary to book days in advance.   My breakfast was a fairly leisurely and late one, so I set off just before 10am to take the approximately one hour journey to St Davids.  I had 45 minutes to look around the cathedral and then was booked into the Bishop’s Palace. 

The drive to St David’s from Tenby is beautiful especially if you take the coastal route and drive over the bridge at Pembroke Dock.  There was no time to stop for photos on the drive to St Davids, but I spotted a sign for a picnic area close by so a photo stop on the way back would be possible. 

The most spectacular part of the drive was easily the approach to Newgale, it was a real wow moment seeing this part of the coastline from a distance.  This was definitely going to be a stop on the way back.  It looked very wild and dramatic.

I satisfied myself with the view for now and pressed on to my destination which was now just 8 miles away.  The city of St Davids looked quite busy driving through the streets, lots of people and shops and cars.  However, there was a car park more suitable for visitors to the cathedral and bishop’s palace, which are next to each other, so it was easier to drive through the commercial centre and park up there.

It was just before 11am when I arrived, so I had a little time to have a look around the outside of St Davids Cathedral before my allocated entrance time.  You can walk around the cathedral, but you can also walk up the hill to the gatehouse which is the sole survivor of the four gates that connected the medieval wall that originally surrounded the cathedral.  From this elevated position you get a good view of the cathedral which is particularly useful for photos.  After taking in the view from the gatehouse, it was my allocated time to go inside the cathedral. 

St Davids Cathedral was built on the site of the burial place of St David who died on 1 March 589.  Pilgrims flocked to his shrine here during the Middle Ages, the base of which is in the cathedral now and incorporated into a new shrine.  This is right next to the most famous tomb in the cathedral, that of Edmund Tudor, the father of Henry VII who became king at the conclusion of the Wars of the Roses. 

The cathedral has the usual impressive choir and stained glass windows, but I was most impressed by the huge cathedral organ that had some massive pipes that reached from floor to ceiling.  They were particularly noticeable because these pipes were bright red.  But I was amazed at the size of them.  I am aware that church organs have a staggering number of pipes that range in size from barely visible to absolutely enormous, but I don’t think I had ever seen any as big as these before.  I think this was possibly because I’d never really noticed them when I’d walked around other cathedrals, but these bright red pipes, surrounding a doorway, with a big sign next to them explaining exactly what they were, made them hard to miss.

It took less than 45 minutes to wander around the interior of the cathedral.  I believe that in TBC (Time Before Covid) it was possible to climb the cathedral tower, but this was not an option today.  It was a pity.  Galloping up to the top of church towers is one of my favourite things to do. On the other hand, it was a fairly standard tower as far as church towers go, not a unique lantern like at Ely Cathedral or the twisted spire of St Mary and All Saints in Chesterfield.  So I wasn’t bitterly disappointed.  If it had been available, it would have been nice to run up the steps to the top, as it was, I was ready to go and look around the Bishop’s Palace instead.

When I first read about the Bishop’s Palace at St Davids, I assumed it was like Bishopthorpe Palace in York, which is the current residence of the Archbishop of York and not generally open to the public.

The Bishop’s Palace of St Davids is a ruin.  When the Pope decreed that two pilgrimages to St Davids was the equivalent to one pilgrimage to Rome, Bishop of St Davids became the most coveted ecclesiastical role in Wales.  Pilgrims flocked to this corner of south west Wales to visit the shrine of St David in the newly constructed cathedral. 

The bishop’s residence was no match for the cathedral’s grandeur until the arrival of Bishop Henry de Gower in the 14^th century who spent 20 years transforming a structure, which was apparently only fit for servants and animals at that time, into a show palace.  The newly constructed Great Hall was where feasts were held and where Bishop Henry would welcome the more distinguished pilgrims. 200 years later, the Reformation reduced the magnificent Bishop’s Palace, like so many other spectacular medieval buildings, to ruins.  And this is what you can visit today.

The Bishop’s Palace website was very clear in stating that if you didn’t book your ticket in advance online, you would not be able to enter.  As with the cathedral, there was plenty of availability even on the day before, although I visited in the last week of May, just a week after more Covid restrictions had been lifted.  It is possible that as the summer progresses and the crowds increase it may be necessary to book a little further in advance.  However, when I arrived at the entrance, it was actually pretty relaxed.  I could walk straight in because I had my ticket at the ready on my phone, but some people had turned up without a ticket and were told that they could go into the ticket office and purchase one there and then as it wasn’t particularly busy.  The Bishop’s Palace is right next door to St Davids Cathedral, but only a small percentage of cathedral visitors appeared to be bothering to look around the ruins of the Bishop’s Palace. 

The Bishop’s Palace ruins can be seen in around 45 minutes.  There is an upper and lower floor.  There was just one part of the upper level ruins that was inaccessible as they were being stabilised, otherwise there was a logical order to walk around the ruins starting on the lower level on one side, then ascending to the upper level and staying on the upper level round to the other side of the ruins and finally seeing the lower level ruins on that side.  There were plenty of opportunities to take some wonderful photos, some of the windows acted as a frame to St David’s Cathedral behind and the impressive architecture of the Great Hall was still evident despite there being no roof. You could see from the main wall of the Great Hall with its large entrance archway and intricate window above that are still intact what a magnificent building this would have been in its heyday.

After taking a few final photos of the Bishop’s Palace inside and then from a distance as I made my way back to the car park, I decided not to stay and look around the city of St Davids, but instead head back towards Tenby, making a couple of stops along the way.

First on the list was that marvellous looking beach in Newgale I’d seen on the way here.  Newgale wasn’t a sunbathers’ beach, this was a paradise for surfers.  The waves were big and crashing, the sky was dramatic, the beach was windswept and cold.  Newgale was an appropriate name.  An artificial sea wall of large pebbles had been built to protect the road, previously the waves had been so powerful they had come crashing over the road and caused a lot of damage to the road surface, plus the obvious danger to drivers.  Now this was a barrier you had to clamber over and down, although there was a spot at the end of the car park where pedestrian access over these stones was easier.

I didn’t spot the easiest route when I headed from the car park to the beach.  It was raining a little, it was very windy and it was cold so I was decked out in a waterproof coat and white gloves.  I love getting photos of me wearing gloves on a beach! It wasn’t too bad clambering up the artificial sea wall of pebbles, but there didn’t seem to be a gentle slope route to get from the top down onto the beach.  I just took it carefully.  I walked along the wild, wet, windy beach for a time, taking photos, watching the kitesurfers making the most of the current conditions and enjoying the stormy weather. 

There wasn’t a lot of point walking the entire length of the beach so I started to walk back towards the car park and this time spotted the mat that had been placed over the stones on the part of the sea wall where the angle was at its most gradual.  It was much easier to access using this pathway, a useful thing to remember if I ever returned here.

There was one final stop to make and that was at the Cleddau Bridge which crosses the River Cleddau between Neyland and Pembroke Dock.  There is a particularly nice view from the bridge and there was a path for pedestrians at either side as well.  There was no facility to stop on the bridge, but there was a picnic area just before the bridge, that I had seen the signpost for on the way to St Davids that morning.  As a picnic area, it is rubbish.  Yes, there is a picnic table in the grass next to the car park.  No, there is no nice view of anything.  All you can see if you’re stupid enough to sit here and have a picnic is a load of overgrown weeds.  No views of the river, the bridge or the towns on either side of the water.  But you can use it as a car park and then walk onto the bridge from there where the views over Pembrokeshire are wonderful. 

A couple of interesting facts about the bridge are that during construction in 1970 this steel box girder bridge collapsed killing 4 men and this brought about a change in bridge building.  The box section of the bridge had been cantilevered out, but the support had not been thick enough and buckled causing the bridge to collapse.  This fatal flaw cost lives in other parts of the world where bridges constructed in this way also collapsed.  However, after the Cleddau Bridge collapsed, a new standard of box girder bridge design was implemented and this was the last major bridge disaster in the UK.

Sadly this also has a reputation as a bridge for jumpers and there was the Samaritans phone number as we walked on.  To be fair, Pembrokeshire Council have made it as difficult as possible for anyone to climb up and jump off and I think it was fairly obvious to passing motorists I was simply a tourist taking photos of the view from the bridge and didn’t cause anyone any unnecessary alarm.

Then it was time to head back to Tenby.  I had an early meal booked for this evening, but I was content that I had seen St Davids Cathedral, which had been on my list of places to visit for a long time, that I had also got to see the ruins of the Bishop’s Palace and the added bonus of the bridge and the magnificent beach at Newgale.

I travelled to Tenby in May 2021.

St Davids Cathedral is open 7 days a week. It is free to enter. Donations are appreciated. It is no longer necessary to book tickets in advance, but social distancing measures are still currently in place.

The Bishop’s Palace in St Davids is open 7 days a week. It is recommended to book tickets in advance to guarantee entry. Tickets cost £4 for adults.

St Davids is 35 miles from Tenby. It takes approximately one hour to drive there using the coastal route over the Cleddau Bridge.

Newgale Beach is 8 miles and a 15 minute drive from St Davids.

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

Pembrokeshire Coast Path

Tenby

Caldey Island

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 was just depressing me.  Every time I 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. So I had decided to come to Tenby in South West Wales for a break instead.

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 and this afternoon we were going on a walk along the Pembrokeshire Coast Path.

The Pembrokeshire Coast Path is 186 miles long and if you hike it all, the ascents and descents along its length mean you would have climbed more than the height of Everest!  The plans for my hike along the trail were slightly less ambitious.  The 5 mile coastal stretch between Tenby and Saundersfoot takes you along clifftops and through woodlands and fields. 

The Pembrokeshire Coast Path is clearly signposted with an acorn.  We started above Tenby North Beach and followed the road until we got to a lane pointing towards a campground and once at the campground gate the sign pointed off to the right and we were on the hiking trail.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise that a path that boasts you will have climbed higher than Everest if you walk the whole thing would have a lot of hills, but that fact didn’t seem to have really sunk in until now.  We started climbing through the woods and I rapidly got very hot in my down jacket which I was wearing on top of a fleece which I had on over a teeshirt. The down jacket came off and was stuffed into my rucksack as we climbed higher and higher.  In some places it was just a hill, in other places steps had been cut into the trail.

The other thing that I had completely failed to take into consideration was the condition of the trail. I only need one word to describe it. Mud!  The short, sharp, sudden downpours that had come down over Tenby in at least the last couple of days had soaked into the footpath and turned it into a mud bath. At times you could skirt round it, at others you had no choice but to basically wade ankle deep through this slippery mess.  The bad news was my trainers are not waterproof and were rapidly getting covered in wet mud, the good news was my trainers are brown, so the mud was really well camouflaged. 

After a long and fairly steep climb, we came to a gate and when we went through it, we were in a field and from the field was a fantastic view back over to Tenby.  It was very pleasant walking through the field, even though we had to climb yet another hill and then the trail went along the cliff path for a while, once again with marvellous views back to Tenby. 

We walked along the trail which was now following the edge of the cliff and enjoyed views of the beautiful coastline as made our way towards Saundersfoot.  The hiking trail wound its way back into the woods and there were more steps taking us up and down as we made our way to our ultimate destination. 

Unfortunately, the deeper into the woods we got, the deeper the mud got.  It seemed there was no respite from it, as soon as we started to relax because the conditions were getting better, we found ourselves in another swamp.  This 5 mile hike was now turning into a slog through a never ending sea of slippery mud.  Even the steps were extremely muddy, and you had to be really careful not to slip as you stepped downwards.  Some of the steps were also very deep and a bad shoulder meant that I couldn’t use my hiking poles which were my normal stabilisers on a trail where I was in danger of losing my footing.  Alan became my stabiliser instead, helping me down the steeper steps so I didn’t fall.  Alan has the advantage of being much taller than me and therefore having much longer legs which made it easier (although still not easy) for him to negotiate the steps down. 

The mud was unrelenting and the walk was now becoming unpleasant.  I felt that this trail was in desperate need of some maintenance from Pembrokeshire National Park, as a good portion of the Pembrokeshire coastline that the Coast Trail runs through is incorporated into Pembrokeshire Coast National Park.  This part of the trail was actually quite dangerous in its current state, in my opinion, although I do appreciate that with the Covid pandemic, trail maintenance may not have been possible because of the lockdown rules over the spring months. I now couldn’t wait to get to Saundersfoot to put an end to this miserable trudge through deep mud.

We kept getting a tantalising view of Saundersfoot in the distance, but it never seemed to get any closer as we waded through more and more mud.  A little girl wearing wellies passed us with her mum, I commented it was a good idea wearing wellies.  Apparently further on it got even worse.  Worse than this?  I recalled being told about the North West Circuit on Stewart Island in New Zealand where you spent about 10 days wading through mud that was usually knee deep and could sometimes be waist deep.  That wasn’t a hiking trail!  It was madness!  I wouldn’t even contemplate a hike like that, I know that I would spend the entire 10 days in abject misery.

There were a couple of detours down to beaches, but there were plenty of beaches along the coast, so we pressed onto until we reached Saundersfoot.  Saundersfoot looked like a very nice town, but quite frankly I’d walked almost 16 miles today already and I wasn’t particularly keen to add to it by exploring the town.  We could come back here on another day. 

We had both agreed that there was no way in the world we were going to walk back to Tenby on the coast path.  Spending another two and a half hours wading through a 5 mile mud bath was not an appealing prospect.  It was possible to walk back to Tenby on an inland trail which was half the distance of the coastal trail.  If I had been on my own, I probably would have walked, but Alan gave me the perfect excuse to jump in a vehicle which would get us back to Tenby in less than 10 minutes, so I accepted this gratefully.

We were dropped off in Tenby town centre and I walked back to my guesthouse to get myself tidied up before going out for the evening.  Tenby was busy and it was very difficult to get a restaurant reservation with the limited capacity due to the social distancing rules still in force.  I wonder if I will look back and read this in the future and wonder what the hell I lived through.  My biggest fear is reading this in the future and things still haven’t got back to normal.  But that’s another issue.

I travelled to Tenby in May 2021.

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.

The Pembrokeshire Coast Path is a 186 mile trail that follows the coastline in South West Wales. Much of the trail is within the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park.

Read about my other adventures in Wales

The Cathedral City of St Davids

Tenby

Caldey Island