Coast Walking (Wales): Tenby to Pendine Beach 24 June 2015

We walked from the centre of Tenby along the streets bordering North Beach until private properties prevented access to the beach and we had to walk some 300m inland from the coast through fields and woods. The woods are mostly sycamore, which seems to thrive in coastal air, with sessile and pedunculate oaks and holly. Woodland ground flora varied through the day (much of which was spent passing through bands of trees) but was usually luxurious, such as massed ferns – hart’s-tongue, hard fern, soft shield fern, sometimes lady fern and scaly male fern, thick colonies of great wood-rush, or enchanter’s nightshade with yellow pimpernel, wood-sorrel and primrose. At one point late in the day was a small patch of cow-wheat. In another wood by a stream a patch of common valerian. Neither of these plants is often recorded on our coast walks.

The path was up and down, sometimes steeply, along the coastal fringe from Tenby round Monkstone Point and along to the centre of Saundersfoot. In the steep wood at Lodge Valley we saw a brightly coloured bullfinch, not a bird we often see along the coast. We entered Saundersfoot by back streets above the harbour and then down the main road B4316 past St Brides Spa, where we were staying. In the small centre near the harbour at 11am we felt we had earned a coffee in a little café, where we also purchased some lunch to take with us. As the tide was coming in and there were few access places to the beach, we had to follow the coast path through the streets of Saundersfoot to Coppet Hall Point, where we passed Coast Restaurant and travelled on to Wiseman’s Bridge, a walk made easy by dark tunnels bored through the headlands and a continuous promenade. We searched the beach for shells and soon reached Amroth at 12.45, suitably for lunch. There are a number of cafés and pubs which we might have used, but having purchased food we sat on a bench overlooking a beach composed entirely of a bank of large pebbles. We continued along the promenade to Amroth ‘Castle’ (an ugly Victorian building, now the base for a caravan park), shortly after which, passing a large amount of reconstruction going on along the front, we reached New Inn. Nearby was the sign for the end of the Pembrokeshire Coast Path, although we found that the boundary with Carmarthenshire was actually about a kilometre further on.

We were now on the more recent Welsh Coast Path, with its cryptic blue and yellow sign, rather than Pembrokeshire’s white acorns. Immediately the paths seemed less friendly and we had to pass through thickets of gorse that scratched our arms on both sides. Some of the path signs had been defaced, presumably by residents who object to the intrusion of walkers (usually welcomed in Pembrokeshire). The long beach of Marros Sands was completely inaccessible and privatised. Instead we had to use a track uncomfortably strewn with loose stone chippings, with a thick wood on the seaward side preventing any sight or feel of the sea and sand (although we could vaguely hear the surf). This section also had several tough ups and downs, especially at the end when we rose from Ragwen Point and then descended to a small beach, followed immediately by another stiff uphill path before we came down over hundreds of twisting steps to Pendine Beach. Few creatures illuminated this section, but we had to step over the usual death-defying bloody-nosed beetle – a species that has a particular liking for paths; we saw a jay flying over and around the cliff scrub, unusually for this woodland bird; and we saw a bright ginger-coloured moss carder bee, a bumble bee of moors and coast, rare in the south. We arrived at Pendine at 4.15, in time for the 4.30 bus that we waved down beside Beach Hotel after buying ice-cream and postcards at the Post Office.

The cliffs today were of acid soil and the vegetation unexceptional, except for trailing St John's-wort. A few boggy areas provided more records: cross-leaved heath, cuckooflower, marsh St John’s-wort, bog pimpernel, and star sedge.

We ate again at Coast – excellent food and wine, and very friendly, professional service.