Pembrokeshire Coast

Pembrokeshire's Outstanding Coastal Scenery

The southern Pembrokeshire coast, from Tenby to Bosherston, contains some of the finest coastal scenery in Wales. Barafundle Bay — accessible only on foot — is consistently ranked among the most beautiful beaches in Britain, a crescent of golden sand enclosed by headlands of pinkish Ordovician rock with the clearest water in Wales. Stackpole Head, just east of Barafundle, is the finest rock arch on the Pembrokeshire coast. The Bosherston lily ponds — a series of man-made freshwater lakes fed by limestone springs, famous for their June white water lily display — are managed by the National Trust.

Tenby is Pembrokeshire's most visited town and rightly so — a beautifully preserved medieval walled town on a headland between four sandy beaches, its pastel-painted Georgian and Victorian houses creating an intensely photogenic harbour scene. The five-arched medieval town gate, the castle ruins and the views across Caldey Island (home to a working Cistercian monastery open to day visitors) combine to make Tenby one of Wales's most rewarding and most characterful coastal towns.

St Davids and the Preseli Hills

The Preseli Hills in the north of the National Park are a wild moorland landscape of outstanding archaeological significance — the source of the bluestones used to build the inner horseshoe at Stonehenge. Over 80 bluestones were transported from the Preseli quarry sites at Carn Menyn and Carnedd Meibion Owen to Wiltshire — a journey of over 200 miles, whether overland or by sea — around 2400 BC. The why and the how of this extraordinary feat remain among the great unsolved mysteries of British prehistory.