Broadhaven2

Broadhaven

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May 23

The breakfast room at the Lion Rock has a wonderful view over St. Brides Bay and it was all we could do to not linger there for hours. We managed to drag ourselves away and jump back in the Bad Idea and head out for more adventure, A stop at Pembroke Castle was in order as the tour of Welsh Castles continued. This is another fine piece of engineering with a fascinating cave below accessible from the castle. As it turns out, most castles don't actually have a dungeon because the trouble of keeping him was much greater than the trouble of killing or maiming him terribly, but Pembroke is an exception and there is a lovely story of a chap who was imprisoned for about 18 years only to go blind and to contract various horrible diseases that caused his demise upon being set free.

From there, we headed south to the coast to the Stack Rocks and the Green Bridge . There is a parking lot that makes them both easy to reach on foot, this time, without any steep steps. What makes this whole place a bit of a strange contradiction of itself is that the peacefulness of the rocks is sometimes unavailable as the British military uses the area as a tank training site and firing range. I'm not sure how you check the schedule, but we were lucky as it was Sunday and shooting at each other in the morning is apparently inappropriate.

The Green Bridge is an arch cut out by the sea from the soft limestone cliffs. Eventually, it will become a stack rock when the bridge part collapses into the sea. There is a great lookout point for the rocks which provides some fine photo ops. It was a hot sunny day as we walked out and both the photographers and the painters were out to take full advantage. An older woman sat in a chair and read a book and enjoyed what must have been a rare May heat wave. The morning news had been full of stories for days warning about the effects of the sun, but that certainly wasn't going to keep these Welsh folk inside.

A short walk east are the stack rocks and you can wander as far as you like along the trail. A few of the rocks have every available flat surface covered with nesting birds as they have found the off shore nesting locations a safe haven from the rats for their eggs. It is a beautiful site to behold and the noise from the birds is a joy to listen to. We walked up the trail again which occasionally comes dangerously close to the edge which is advertised as a deadly place to be.

Although the trail continues on to St. Govan's church, it is a healthy walk in both directions so we decided to cheat and drive. The entire area is held by the Ministry of Defense and the presence of this ancient church creates and even more peculiar counterpoint to the firing range. The car park for the church is just a short stroll to the steps down, which by Bedruthan standards, is a piece of cake. Although I have seen pictures of the church, I never realized that it sits in a cove over looking the ocean. It's age is uncertain but it's presence suggest a peacefulness betrayed by the combat zone above. Nestled in the rocks on the most southerly point on the Pembrokeshire Coast , it’s a beautiful spot to absorb the past. Legend has it that St. Govan was being chased and as he leapt over the cliff, the rock closed up around him to protect him from his pursuers. One they had left, the rocks opened allowing Govan to escape and they never closed again. Although the day was a bit cooler than the 80s we had experienced earlier, an ice cream stand selling a Welsh version of the treat beckoned and Felicity arrived just in time to get a free cone that had been rejected by a surly husband. She figured it was good karma for offering our barely used Pay and Display parking pass at Pembroke Castle to a mother struggling with her child.

We pulled into Manobier to see Manobier Castle , but realized it was a struggle to get to and not free for us and we had plenty more roofless castles to see at no cost. From there, we followed the road into Tenby. The owners of the Creek House were much enamored with Tenby and admired it's Mediterranean feel. The beach is an long stretch of sand set well below the town whose beach front is lined with small hotel painted in contrasting pastels. Much of the original city wall still exists but once inside, it is just filled with gift shops, most of them junk filled. There are quite a few restaurants available and we pondered if we would stay to enjoy dinner there. Eventually we found ourselves down at the harbor which provides a few nice opportunities for photos, but no pubs and thus, NO BEER. What kind of harbor is this?

Back up in the city, we found our way to the Lifeboat Pub which had no food to offer that evening and the decision was made to have a drink and wander back to the Bad Idea to find something quainter than what Tenby had to offer. One interesting note about the Lifeboat Tavern is that it has the as remarkable a design to the bar as you will find. The bar top sits on an actual lifeboat hull with the rudder still intact. I marveled at it for quite a while.

The plan was to wander back to Broadhaven and stop at the first interesting pub we found. We saw little along the road to tempt us and then drove towards the town of Dale, sitting out on the peninsula leading to St. Ann's Head. Again, nothing seemed to really draw us, though it's harbor is a nice little spot, so instead, we drove on to St. Ann's. There we stopped to briefly enjoy the view and realizing that we were beginning to reach starvation point, decided to head back towards Little Haven, just down the road from Broad haven.

Little Haven turned out to be an excellent choice. We ate at the Castle Pub as the sun dropped towards the water. As we were eating, on one of the very few occasions that I didn't have my camera, another fabulous pub shot appeared before me that I would miss. A very young girl (about 4) grabbed a seat at the bar and in the process, her pants dropped a bit lower than was proper. Indeed, the craic was mighty that evening. The food was excellent as was the beer as I continued my trail of cask ales.

As we exited The Castle Pub, the sun was just reaching the horizon which pulled almost everyone out to watch the spectacle. Far out on the rocks, a fisherman was casting his line as the sun set over the bay. Nature was again putting on a show and we all had front row seats.

Click on each picture for a larger View

Felicity at Pembroke Castle	Bill at Pembroke Castle	Inside Pembroke Castle	More of Pembroke Castle
The cave below Pembroke Castle	Us at the Green Bridge	The Green Bridge	Messing with the light at the Green Bridge
The Stack Rocks	A rock close to becoming a Stack Rock	The coast at the Stack Rocks. A gull rest securely atop the spire near us.	St. Govan's from above
Messing with the light again at the Stack Rocks	St. Govan's from below	Inside St. Govan's the rocks have collapsed where a wall was formed.	Felicity at St. Govan's
The beach at Tenby	More of the beach at Tenby	Dale Harbor	Sunset in Little Haven

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