Day 23: July 13th

We had a very good breakfast at our accommodation. You pre-order the day before for the required time (the chef is very literal about the time and cooked items are ready on the dot). I decided on mushrooms on toast and had some muesli and yoghurt also. Mike had the poached eggs and muesli. Neither of us was up to the full breakfast.
Our host has a record player in the dining room and was playing an Eartha Kitt album during breakfast.

The record player is identical to one I got for Christmas as an 11 or 12 year old ( together with a Beatles Yellow Submarine 45!)

Unfortunately Mike’s rumbling sore tooth has now got very sore so he was in need of panadols also. What a pair. I look a sight and he feels bad!

We had parked around the corner at the railway station car park which costs £4.25 (coins only) for 24hours as the only other option is finding free parking on the street. The apparently free parks inside dotted lines are actually permit holder parks so not free at all!

The car is fine to drive but is definitely no frills. No cameras, no warning sounds, it’s manual and you need to change gears to go up hills. Oh and unlike the car in Ireland, there are 5 gears and not 6, so if you try to put it in 6th you are actually going into reverse, which it doesn’t like!

When we got back from our trip around Pembrokeshire we saw a free space which was very convenient.

We decided to drive to Pembroke Castle and then take a scenic trip across Pembrokeshire towards the coast on the west and a loop back ti Tenby.

Pembroke Castle is in Pembroke, not surprisingly, and was well worth the visit.

We got given a car park ticket from some people just leaving which was great. There was a short walk up to the castle and we were just in time for a guided tour. It was excellent. We learned heaps about the early history of Wales and about how castles operated. Pembroke was first built in 1093 as a wooden structure and the first stone walls were built in the 1200s and are still part of the existing structure along the cliffs above the river. The newest parts were built in the 1600s so still quite old 🤗.

This is the main Keep on the left. It’s roof is still intact. Main function was to lord it over the village and display wealth and power as per the balcony at Buckingham Palace. The tower on the right was the dungeon. Some Irish lord that wouldn’t give up his land was thrown in there and forgotten about for 7 years until the next Duke investigated what was in there!

Looking west towards Pembroke Dock in the distance. Note the oil refinery and power station enhancing this historic landscape! The camera has them rather more distant than they were.

After leaving Pembroke we headed off west to explore. The Welsh valleys and countryside is lovely but it’s jolly hard to see. They have these hedgerows and banks on both sides of the roads so it is like driving with blinkers. You get to see down hills in front of the car but nothing to the sides. The roads are also very narrow. Mike got some photos while we were driving but these are far from the narrowest. Fortunately we had plenty of warning before we came across oncoming cars and had room to pull over so didn’t have to do any reversing. How people manage on the blind corners I don’t know but they generally drive pretty slowly by necessity.

This is quite a wide one but shows the tunnel effect.

Again reasonably wide but very typical of the road sides. Believe it or not the coast is just beyond that bank on the left.

There was a small parking area and lookout and this is what we found. There are numerous walkways all along the coast. This is just south of a village called Sandy Haven

We couldn’t find a park in Sandy Haven so drove north about 2 miles until we got to Broad Haven. Again we were lucky to be given a car park card just as we arrived. We were then able to pass that on when we left, which made a local dog walker very happy.

Nice beach though for these hardy souls. It wasn’t cold but was very windy and I’d guess the water was not tropical.

After Broad Haven we headed across to Saundersfoot which is a beach place just north of Tenby. It was nice but not as nice as Tenby. It had a marina and lots of wind! And it was hard to find a park.

Looking back at Saundersfoot and marina from the marina wall.

We were originally going to dinner at this flash restaurant about 20 minutes drive from Tenby but decided that Tenby had more than enough restaurants so canceled and we’re glad we did as Mike’s tooth got progressively worse until he had more Panadol and I couldn’t eat all my seafood risotto as it was.

We went to Florentino’s on the waterfront in Tenby. I have never had so much actual seafood in one dish before. The dish is quite a deep bowl. There must have been a dozen each of mussels and clams, plus prawns and squid rings. I had to leave about 4 king prawns and some squid rings and Mike didn’t get his salmon tagliatelle finished either! Would totally recommend.

We are not sure what’s going on with the tides. Yesterday we were by the bay at about 5pm and the tide was out and the boats were beached. This photo was the following day at 8.30 pm and it is even more out. And it looked to us like the tide was out at Broad Haven also and that was 2.30pm.