16 | THE WONDER OF WEST WALES


www.nitravelnews.com


June 2024


BY TOM ADAIR


LONG ago I had an acquaintance who thought that Wales was “a land of coalmines and male voice choirs”—as somewhere you bypassed. He’d flown to Cardiff once, for the rugby. “Take a car,” I told him. “Turn right when you get to Liverpool. Open your mind.” Now, paying heed to my own advice, I crossed with Stena Line to Scotland, headed south and found myself motoring round the curve of Cardigan Bay, passing places with names with no vowels—Eglwys Fach, Tywyn, Blaenplwyf--the misty horizon obscuring Ireland, a stiffening wind whipping up the sea, pegging white waves like distant sheets, my destination: the jutting, rocky, broken- toothed headlands of ancient Pembrokeshire. I was driving myself to distraction. I plunged (almost literally) into Fishguard


by 5 o’clock, asking a fisherman at the harbour the way to Manor Town House, my hotel for the night. “That’s in Upper Town, head for the Co-Op”. He pointed skywards. Manor Town House wasn’t quite on a cloud, but it had the gracefulness of Georgian regularity. Chris and Helen, its proprietors, gave me a top-floor sea-view nest in their beautifully furnished, done-up abode. It was stylish yet homely. With hawk-like vision, I might have seen Ireland. But my stomach was speaking of pub grub. The Royal Oak boasted steaks and pies and


great fish ‘n’ chips, and was to Upper Town what The Ship Inn was to Lower Town. The Inn boasted photos of movie stars, having featured in the movie Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood. Had Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton climbed the hill to get drunk at my table?


Reading the guide books you’ll learn that


in 1797 a band of Napoleonic fanatics staged the last invasion of Britain at Fishguard harbour. Promptly defeated, they were frog- marched up to the ‘Oak’ to sign the surrender. This tale was retold the following morning inside the Town Hall, the French stitched up again, immortalised in The Last Invasion Tapestry, embroidered by local women in the style of that at Bayeux. Outside the town hall, Fishguard’s square showed off its gems: St Mary’s Church, two local galleries, a great bookshop, and a deli, (The Gourmet Pig), where I stocked up on pies. I planned a coastal path walk before lunch on my way to St. David’s. Now I was primed. The Pembrokeshire Coast Path snakes continuously for 186 miles, skirting cliff tops, dipping gently then climbing skywards, past huddles of silhouetted farmhouses, golden fields of swaying rapeseed . To a restless soundtrack of birdsong and ocean, you’ll come upon dog walkers, goat-like pensioners dressed for the Arctic. Wear sturdy footwear, and bring all your senses—most especially your sense of wonder. I stopped at Porthgain a few miles from Fishguard, and headed straight up the trodden rack towards a vista of headlands. It


felt like shipwreck country, smugglers’


terrain, freezing gusts of knifing wind propelling me landward and after an hour I turned in my tracks. Porthgain’s harbour had remnants of mining, but now it mostly played host to pleasure: Anoraked walkers crowded The Shed, a popular restaurant. I took a walk through a nearby gallery ogling art, then consumed two pies and a flask of hot tea and pointed the car towards St. David’s Head and Twr y Felin, once a windmill and now a superbly appointed ‘art hotel’, my promised two night abode.


Its award winning restaurant provided an excellent three course dinner; its wall to wall paintings hit the eye with artistic boldness. Two framed landscapes above my bed hung in competition with the view through my sliding doors of sea-salted fields. St. David’s itself, Britain’s smallest city, was perched on a headland and felt plugged into the ocean’s power. Nature’s presence suffused the vista-vision landscape—perhaps why St David chose this site as holy ground. Visitors walked the simple pilgrimage route along High Street towards the cathedral, past bijou enterprising businesses selling artisan Welsh crafts. menus.


Local ingredients fuelled


Among the eateries, the Really Wild Emporium, art deco from step to slates, was the standout choice. Run by John and Julia Mansfield, it hosted a restaurant, a natural produce


shop and


three welcoming air b’n’bs.


It was a


mission statement. John, who foraged hedgerows and combed the beaches, ran pick-your-own tours. The restaurant, (corrugated iron, bare-brick and old furniture), salmon,


served pork and


cuttlefish, dressed with buckthorn sauce and nasturtium- flavoured


“Sustainability is everything,” attested.


The place


mayo. he


Just a mile away, at The Bug Farm, edible insects were on the menu.


crawled with oohing


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