Into Pembrokeshire, Saundersfoot & Tenby, South Wales

What’s that on the weather forecast? Rain?! After several days of nice weather on The Gower, the sight of a cloud with rain drops on the map had us packing up Zagan and fleeing the peninsula. Not that there’s a problem on when it rains there, but at £35 a night for a campsite pitch, we want to be outside and able to enjoy it. If we were going to be stuck inside, we might as well be somewhere cheaper. Someone wrote a comment on a recent post asking if we would still be sticking to our budget of £20k a year this year, I guess it was promoted by our recent run of high cost sites. In all honestly, I have no idea. We’re well on target at the moment, but with everything rising in cost (we’ve spotted diesel at £1.98 a litre!) and no end in sight to that, we might not do it this year. However, that figure isn’t a number we rigidly stick to. We won’t stop spending if we’re going to go over, it’s more of a benchmark to compare against at the end of the year.

We’d needed a reason to finally make a move off The Gower, and the forecast rain was it. Onwards to Pembrokeshire, or we prefer its more formal-sounding Welsh name ‘Sir Benfro’. We hummed and harred at several campsites in Camarthenshire, before finally deciding to blast straight through that county (saving it for another trip) and on to the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. Then came the big decision, to Tenby, or not to Tenby. We’re not big fans of touristy places, mainly because in the UK they are a pain to get to in a motorhome. So, we decided to find a campsite outside Tenby and maybe get the bus in, depending on the weather.

A quick look on the ‘Search for Sites’ website and we found a small site for just £14 a night including hook-up, or £12 without, so off we headed. Unfortunately as we pulled into Morrisons to stock up on food on our way here, the fridge started playing up again, so hook-up it was. We arrived at Evening Star Farm Campsite in Pentlepoir (N51.722596, W4.72113) while the owner was out. We’d called ahead so she knew we were coming, so we parked up in the field, hooked-up and sent her a text to let her know. The site is just what we need, no frills and a good price. From our pitch we can see the motorhomes and caravans in a nearby award-winning campsite. They’re paying about double what we are, and we’re sure they’ll have better facilities than us, but for the difference, we’ll use the facilities in our van.

The sun was shining when we got here, so we took a walk down the road to the nearby resort of Saundersfoot. It turns out they aren’t big on pavements or grass verges to walk on around here. Even though all the drivers were really nice and slowed down or stopped for us on the narrow, twisty lane, after a mile or so, we were pleased to reach The Incline. This used to be a trainline that lowered drams of coal down to Saundersfoot harbour, now all that’s left is the winding house and a lovely safe, traffic-free path straight into the town.

Reaching Saundersfoot we went for a wander around the harbour. It was great to see that it has had some serious redevelopment work done to it, with a large decked area and what I could only describe as an ‘information boat’. It’s shaped like a boat, but isn’t one. It’s not open yet, but later this year it sound like you’ll be able to climb the rigging and go below deck to find out about sea life in the area. The bit we liked the best though was a purpose-built zone for catching crabs.

As we walked around the nice little town and beach, clouds gathered, the wind picked up and we started to regret not bringing our coats. Rather than risk another walk along the road, we hopped on the bus back up to Pentlepoir and tried to remember when we last went on a bus, we think it was when we were in Keswick last summer in the motorhome. I can’t believe it’s been almost a year since I was last on a bus, how times have changed.

This morning I was woken by the rain hammering on Zagan’s roof. This normally signals a lovely excuse for a lie-in, but I had some work to do for our running club committee, so I left Jay dozing off again and got it all finished by 9.30am. By the time we’d had breakfast around ten, the sky was brightening up and the rain easing. The forecast had said rain all day, but now it changed to say it would end soon. Once it had, we grabbed our coats and wandered over to where we thought the bus stop to Tenby was. A bus approached while we were a little distance away from the stop, so I started to make a run for it. The bus beeped, indicated, turned down a road behind us, then stopped. We turned around and ran back over to it, as it wasn’t at a bus stop and blocking the roundabout just a little. It turns out there are several bus routes to Tenby, and this one went via Saundersfoot on the road we walked down and not the one we got the previous bus back up. Normally I’m quite good on public transport, but I must be out of practice (that or the total lack of timetables at any of the bus stops).

I’ve visited Tenby before on a biology field week with school, so it was many, many years ago. I can’t remember anything about that trip other than being freezing cold and staring into rock pools a lot, so I was really surprised how pretty the place is. As we got off the bus I put a bookmark on my maps.me app so we could find where we needed to catch the bus back from, but really I needn’t have worried. The town is quite compact and easy to navigate.

We walked along the outside of the old town walls until we reached ‘Five Arches’ which was one of only two land side entrance gates to the town in medieval times. In modern times, arriving through this gate we landed headfirst in a world of sweetie shops, seaside stuff, and foodie joints. Luckily a couple of streets away these dissipated and we were treated to pastel-coloured houses and great sea views.

We soon popped back out of the walls, which had been built in the 13th Century by the Normans to keep out the local Welsh population (yes I had to read that twice too), and found ourselves staring out across the beach towards the tidal island of St Catherine’s. The Victorian fort on the island was built to defend Tenby from an attack by Napoleon III. Of course this was only possible because as the town became a popular sea-side resort, parts of the walls were knocked down to give a better seaview.

As is normal for us, we did absolutely no research before we went to Tenby. Instead we spent a pleasant few hours wandering around the streets and beach. Looking at three of the old life boat stations, one of which we remember watching being converted into a home on Grand Designs, and looking in the current lifeboat station at the amazing kit and history they have in there.

We walked around the harbour to see the iconic view of the pastel-coloured buildings around its edge, then up onto Castle Hill from where we could the outline of the Gower Peninsular.

Every other house seemed to have a blue plaque on it and the town is steeped in history – we only discovered while writing this post that the inventor of the equals sign (=), Robert Recorde, was born here, thereby discovering that someone invented the equals sign! I’m pretty sure we could have seen a lot more, spent hours in museums and churches, but we’ve done so much of that in the past that we really need to be in the right frame of mind to do it. We’ve learned a few things today, had some exercise and enjoyed some unexpected sunny spells. Yes folks, the OurTour guide to Tenby would be pretty thin if we wrote one, but we enjoyed our day and that’s what matters the most.

Ju x