June 2024
www.nitravelnews.com
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and aahing kids, (and queasy parents), consuming the joys of the Tropical Bug Zoo and Grub Kitchen Cafe. I promptly excused myself, grabbing a tube of ‘cricket cookies’ and headed to Evensong in the cathedral. Next morning I rinsed away the memories at Saint David’s Old Farmhouse Brewery, craft beer heaven, and planned a boat trip to Ramsey Island, steeped in bird life. But trips were cancelled thanks to the murk and I left by the brighter route for Tenby, heading inland. Tenby had everything you could crave in a British seaside resort. Perfect beaches of shelved golden sand, a maze of charming narrow often cobbled streets that tipped from the mediaeval heart to a sheltered harbour. I roosted at Amroth Cottage in Cresswell Street, self-catering in comfort, in one of Coastal Cottages’ palaces, bed like a cloud, it’s quiet location two steps from everything I desired. When I stepped outside it seemed I was standing inside a postcard: The fortified 13th century walls, the tall-spired, ancient church of St. Mary, visible everywhere for miles, the clutch of merchants’ houses, hostelries brimming with pedigree, a market hall and, clinging to the slope overlooking a curve of perfect sand, a terrace of pastel painted houses, a tourist board’s dream. There should have been donkey rides, and candy floss. But the season was just beginning.
The Dinosaur Theme Park and its rival, Folly Farm, which boasted a fairground and a zoo, were more than a roar away, but still close. I settled for galleries, the best independent music shop I’ve been to, (Dales in High Street), a second hand bookshop with towers of tomes defying gravity, and the Coach and Horses gastropub, the town’s oldest where 70 years ago Dylan Thomas (still remembered), staggered out legless, leaving behind his only copy of Under Milk Wood.
Stories and legends in Tenby abound. Its Pavillion Theatre ran year round tribute acts and concerts. But the tribute act I most
treasured was Tenby itself, a living homage to every era it ever witnessed. Pub grub, fish and chips from Fecci’s in Lower Frog Street, the countless windows of curiosity shops, all beguiled me. My three days melted. I briefly absconded, heading for Narberth, (voted one of the twenty best places to live in Britain), a tiny market town unspoiled by corporate shopping, where parking was free and traders thrived. It lay in its hinterland of rolling, bosky landscape concealing the gem that was Velfrey Winery, home to the Mounsey family, rookies, dreamers, alchemists, who in eight years had turned a south facing field of loam into sparkling reality. They ran lunch tours, served their wines
and dispensed a compendium of knowledge like no other winery I’ve encountered. The cheese and charcuterie (doubtless from Narberth) fitted the bill. ‘Beaut with chips,’ I thought, as I sipped a crisp dry white, regretting later not buying a bottle to go that night with my battered cod. My final morning arrived like an ambush. I tidied and packed, and clutching my camera, headed out to slump like a walrus across the railings above North Beach. The arguing chorus of hungry gulls had long since ceased and I gazed at the pleasure boats, small as toys as they ploughed the waves to Caldey Island. From far below, the bark of a dog flew past, mixed with children’s cries and memories of sand and lettuce sandwiches. Here comes summer, I thought. In Tenby it has no sell by date. Come soon.
For further information go to: www.
visitpembrokeshire.co.uk Getting there:
www.stenaline.co.uk or
www.stenaline.ie (crossings from Dublin to Holyhead and Rosslare to Fishguard) Accommodation:
www.
manortownhouse.com (tel:01348
873260)
www.twryfelinhotel.com (01437 725555)
www.coastalcottages.
co.uk (01437 765765) Eating etc:
www.reallywildemporium.
co.uk www.royaloakfishguard.co.uk www.oldfarmhousebrewery.co.uk www.
velfreyvineyard.com
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