Pembrokeshire Coastal Path Day 12

Distance 15 miles
Ascent 670m
Weather warm and sunny

From the hotel we walked around into Lower Fishguard Town around the Marine Walk, where it was laundry day in the car park.

A plaque at Goodwick harbour tells a grand (and possibly fictional) story of a heyday of transatlantic liners porting here before they moved to Southampton. Fishguard harbour is pretty but not touristy, there is no beach here. A path leads out to the remains of a small fort, armed with some cannons and a crow. These (apart from the crow) date from 1797 French invasion, the last successful invasion of Britain, despite being a bit crap and surrendering within two days.

From the harbour we climbed steadily upwards, then dropped down a bit then climbed upwards some more. Repeat.

We saw a red kite and guillemots on the nooks and crannies of the cliffs. The path wiggles its way around heads and coves, along the boundaries of fields and the cliff edge and along little hawthorn lined paths. There were plenty of butterflies, bees and songbirds. Also flies, but they are less romantic.

We had a sit down at the beach at Aber Bach, which was very peaceful, then walked around to Pwllgwaelod bay where we had lunch at the Old Sailors pub, sat out in the garden in the sunshine.

A sustained climb up onto Dinas Head brought us to the view point, topped with a trig point (142m) looks our to sea. We got grunted at by ravens and stonechats. On the way down, we followed the 'cliff edge path' sign down a steep grassy slope, leading to a narrow path clinging to the side of the cliff. We got a very good view of the gulimots and gulls on Needle Rock, but it was a bit vertigo inducing. A sit down and ice-cream at Cwm-yr-Eglwys was appreciated.

The way continued up a narrow lane and then through woodland, or possibly just a big hedge, ot was hard to tell through the trees. Not many views.

Crossing a pebble beach, there were loads of gulls having a paddle in a fresh water pool under the cliff at Cwm Rhigian. As we walked up on the cliff on the other side, we could see the flocks of birds waiting their turn on the ploughed field above.

The path crossed some high, jagged cliffs before gently descending down to Parrog, at the estuary, then follows the salt marsh into Newport, which is prettier than I'd expected. There have been tractors coming and going all evening, hopefully they'll stop soon as they are noisy.