Coast Walking (Wales): Angle to Castlemartin 19 June 2015

From Angle we took the footpath beside the church round the north side of the inlet, where there was a good variety of saltmarsh plants. Round Angle Point we started walking west along the cliffs, above the lifeboat station and to the NW point of the Angle peninsula, where Thorn Island lay off the coast, almost entirely covered by a fort-like building and flocks of herring gulls; this building is designated “Hotel” on the OS map, which is hardly believable, both given its grim appearance and the lack of any terrain outside it other than steps down to a jetty. It turns out this was originally a Napoleonic fort that was used commercially in 1980s-90s, since when it has changed hands and currently has no use.

From there we continued round into West Angle Bay, which was quite populous. The sands had virtually no shells. A cove on the north side of the bay exposes Carboniferous limestone, while the cliffs to the south are of Old Red Sandstone. We continued south along the cliffs facing across to Dale and St Ann’s Head across Milford Haven (which is a large ria which has taken a good part of four days to get round).

Only when we reached the southern cliffs and began walking east did we feel that at last we were making progress in terms of the coast walk. Much of this walk was fairly level until we came to a series of deeper coves where the path went steeply down and up, slowing progress, although streams running down these provided more variety of plants, such as marsh pennywort, brookweed and confused eyebright. The booms and rattles of gunfire, however, could regularly be heard from the Castlemartin Artillery Range ahead, which takes a large headland and area of dunes completely out of access. We saw heath pearlwort, trailing St.John's-wort and common cudweed (not quite yet in flower) in this section, where the spring squills were well over. Choughs and ravens were encountered yet again and heathy scrub was as usual popular with birds like wren, linnet, stonechat and whitethroat. Skylarks sang overhead, meadow pipits on the fence-posts. On one occasion we followed a tiger beetle along the path, keeping its distance and flying well ahead every time we got too close.

In the last cove we sat on the sheltered lower cliff for lunch. We then gradually descended into Freshwater West bay, with wide sands, dunes and exposures of Old Red Sandstone rocks, including several conglomerates, at the southern end (called Furzenip). Again the beach was devoid of shells, so we were able to concentrate on the dunes. At the head of the beach was sea rocket, much sea bindweed and some Portland spurge (only a little sea holly and sea spurge) among the front mobile dunes. The rest of the area was well-established dunes with a small amount of almost dry slacks, so that the vegetation was limited but included many pyramidal orchids (many of whose leaves were being eaten by sandhill snails), some southern marsh orchids, and several large patches of squinancywort. At the south end there was a car park and the fence enclosing the military range. We walked along the road which bordered the range east to Castlemartin village to catch a bus back to Angle. In the evening at Pembroke we ate at the Indian restaurant next door to the Old Kings Arms and this was a pleasant change.

On Saturday 20 June we had a day off from walking and this gave us a chance to explore Pembroke Castle, which is large, well preserved or restored, and was once the home of the famous knight William Marshal (probably no relation). There was plenty to explore, but the most interesting part was a large cavern over which the castle had been built. Signs of Stone Age occupation have been found in this huge dark cave, which had a small opening on to the river, just a few metres above the bank. The walls in part were covered with green fronds of Crystalwort Riccia fluitans, a bryophyte. In the evening we ate at the Coach House, almost opposite our B&B, where there was a large regimental gathering in full evening dress and scarlet uniforms to celebrate the second centenary of the Battle of Waterloo.