It’s not just the Queen celebrating a Platinum anniversary this year: the magnificent Pembrokeshire Coast National Park is marking its own 70th birthday in 2022, while the Wales Coast Path itself is turning 10 years old.
So what better time to go west, discovering the sandy beaches, dramatic cliffs, ancient woodland and hidden valleys of the coastline, along with historic sites from castles to standing stones — the bluestones used at Stonehenge come from the Preseli Hills in the north of Pembrokeshire, a short way inland?
The entire Wales Coast Path stretches for 870 miles, connecting a string of historic coastal trails such as those around Anglesey and Ceredigion: add in the 177-mile Offa’s Dyke Path National Trail on the Welsh-English border, and you can walk a complete circuit of the country, including the 182-mile Pembrokeshire path.
But you don’t need to be a long-distance hiker with months to spare to try it. Routes range from family-friendly and accessible trails if you’re looking for an easier stroll to mindfulness walks which take you to quieter spots.
And this year, a new set of 20 itineraries has been released which focus on Welsh history and heritage — including some of the 600-plus castles in Wales, which has more per square mile than anywhere in the world.
Part of a joint project with Cadw, the organisation looking after many of Wales’s heritage sites, the routes share background on the historic locations, including castles like Caernarfon and Criccieth, plus ideas of more things to do in the area, and longer walks for an extra challenge.
Criccieth NVW-C10-1415-0006 CREDIT © Crown copyright (2022) Cymru Wales
Criccieth Castle (Photo: © Crown copyright (2022) Cymru Wales)
Pembrokeshire on foot
You won’t be short of inspiration for walks anywhere in Wales, but with its spectacular coastline and countryside, the westernmost point of the country makes a perfect place to start, including these four routes.
Wow Walks
Marloes Sands to Martin’s Haven: two miles
With views to the islands of Skomer, Skokholm and Gateholm — named by Viking invaders — this walk around the cliffs takes you past huge colonies of puffins. Just one of the seabirds which nest here, you can also spy grey seals with their pups at the water’s edge in late August and early September.
Wildflowers line the route too, from snowdrops and primroses early in the year to bluebells in late spring, then red campions and foxgloves in summer.
And from the headland at the western end of the Marloes Peninsula, you can look out across St Brides Bay to St Davids Peninsula, as well as spying the Welsh mountain ponies and Welsh Black cattle that live in the walled Deer Park (despite the name, never actually home to deer).
Culture and Heritage
Manorbier to Freshwater East: four miles
All the highlights of Pembrokeshire in one lovely walk — a castle, miles of golden sands and even a chance to spot the North Devon coast on a clear day. Look out for glow worms at dusk on the dunes of Freshwater East in summer.
Along with Manorbier’s 12th century castle and Neolithic burial chamber in the cliffs, you can spot a drowned forest of ancient trees on the beach at low tide: submerged as much as 10,000 years ago as the sea rose, the woodland has been preserved by the salt water for millennia.
The path also passes Swanlake Bay, accessible only by foot, before reaching the open beach of Freshwater East, once a haunt of smugglers, now a nature reserve.
sea pinks CREDIT Visit Wales Ursula Martin
Sea pinks (Photo: Visit Wales/Ursula Martin)
Family-friendly adventure
Dinas Head: eight miles
This circular walk around the high cliffs of Dinas Head lets you feel almost as if you’re out at sea, with the headland surrounded on three sides by water. Looking out over Needle Rock, you’ll get one of the best views to Newport Sands and inland towards the Preseli Hills.
Home to birdlife galore, especially during the summer months when seabirds nest on the cliffs, there are also wildflowers galore, from bluebells in late spring to orchids later in the year.
Don’t miss spotting the ruins of a church destroyed in a storm in 1859 near the hamlet of Cwm-yr-Eglwys along the way.
Mindfulness
West Angle Bay: four miles
This sandy beach is fringed with rockpools, home to rare cushion starfish, before the path leads over the red sandstone cliffs to a viewpoint looking out to Thorne Island.
The site of a Victorian fort, it’s one of seven built to defend Milford Haven against the threat of invasion from France — there’s a second at Chapel Bay Fort, further along.
After reaching Angle Bay, with its wading birds such as oystercatchers and curlews, the circular walk takes you back to your starting point at West Angle Bay.
Go to visitpembrokeshire.com or walescoastpath.gov.uk for more details
Laugharne Castle WCP MG 3069 CREDIT © Crown copyright (2022) Cymru Wales
Laugharne Castle (Photo: © Crown copyright (2022) Cymru Wales)
Slow walking in Wales
If you needed proof that the Wales Coast Path isn’t only for hardened hikers, new book Slow Walking The Wales Coast Path tells the story of two women’s journey along the trail. Lucy O’Donnell and Eirlys Thomas were both inexperienced walkers when they started their adventure, chronicled in the book.
Walking the path “almost accidentally”, according to Eirlys — who started the challenge after retiring, while Lucy had taken redundancy — the pair spent around 100 days discovering secrets of their home country during an 18-month period.
“Although the scenery really captured our imagination, every section we walked had its own story to tell, so we were able to dig a bit deeper,” Eirlys adds. “There were poets, there are pirates, there are shipwrecks, all of that along the coast — castles and kings and fairies and ghosts. All of that started to unveil itself to us.”
Laugharne, on the south coast of Wales, famous for its links to Dylan Thomas, was one favourite spot but the walk helped them to rediscover some well-known landscapes too.
“When we started in South Wales, it was so familiar to me – I was born in Bridgend, went to school in Port Talbot, holidayed in Porthcawl... but to see all these places from a slightly different angle was jaw-dropping,” explains Lucy.
The two-mile route around Laugharne is a perfect easy introduction to the coast path, passing the medieval-fortress-turned-Tudor mansion of Laugharne Castle on the estuary before reaching Dylan Thomas’s boathouse.
You can peek inside the shed where he wrote, preserved as it was while he lived there.
Laugharne WCP MG 3099 CREDIT © Crown copyright (2022) Cymru Wales
Laugharne (Photo: © Crown copyright (2022) Cymru Wales)
The path south from the village follows the route immortalised in his Poem in October, passing Laugharne Marsh, with dunes sheltering it from the sea.
For views of the coast, climb Sir John’s Hill, while archaeological finds at the nearby quarries at Coygan have included Neanderthal hand axes over 30,000 years old, as well as ancient hyena and woolly rhinoceros bones.
Slow Walking The Wales Coast Path (Candy Jar Books) is available from walescoastpath.my-online.store and Amazon
Wales Coast Path in numbers
100 beaches lie along the path, more per mile than anywhere else in the UK
95,800 feet: the total rise and fall of the path is nearly three times the height of Everest
16 castles are built along or close to the Welsh coastline
2 National Parks
3,000 shipwrecks within two kilometres of the coastline
2,000 pairs of Sandwich terns, a sea bird that has its only Welsh nesting colony at Cemlyn Bay on Anglesey during the summer
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