Swimming With The Jellyfish | Pembrokeshire

We did a bit of a beach tour on Tuesday. 

   

First stop was the National Trust beach, Marloe Sands. 

You drive along these tiny roads, barely wide enough for a mini, with nothing but fields and the odd timber farm building.  

After about 10 minutes, you park up, pay your parking fee (£3 for the afternoon/ £5 for the day) & start a 15 minute walk down the cliff, through a field, past this isolated bungalow-lovers paradise. 

But still no beach insight.

There's a trickle of water to your left, you start smelling the salt in the air & you realise there's nothing sweeter. 

 And then you come to this: 

A perfect rural beach; with such an abundance of rock pools, they cross every walkway to the ocean. 

The trickle of water to your left, continues on its steep climb down, snaking over the fine stones, through the rock pools & shimmers across the sand to meet the sea.

You could spend an entire day at Marloes Sands so effortlessly. There's rock pooling for kids & big kids. 

And a huge expanse of sand & waves! 

Bare in mind, it's National Trust, so there's no toilets or ice cream sheds. In other words, pack a mighty picnic, and maybe wee in the sea.

    

After an hour or so in the waves, C gestured towards a blue squidge in the water, "jellyfish". I swam over to marvel at the blue jelly & notice five other clear jellyfish on the way. One with purple spots & another with brown spots. 

I've already been stung by a jelly. It wasn't too bad, but it was a bit of a hassle. Therefore, shortly after we realised we were swimming in a swarm of compass, moon & blue jellyfish we resigned from the waves & headed to Little Haven. 

We went for a dip, headed to the pub, played Monopoly and ate dark chocolate & orange cake.

And after that we went for a pre-dinner snorkel at one of Pembrokeshire's best diving spots. 

We stuffed our faces at dinner (why does swimming make you so hank marvin'!?) & fell straight to sleep with salt still on our skin & sand in between our toes.

Walking Welsh Cliffs | Pembrokeshire

The landscape in Pembrokeshire is dramatic, windswept & quiet. 
The Pembrokeshire coastline is the only UK coastal national park, and (I hope) from these photos you can see why. 

We walked for a few hours and saw no man, just wild ponies & moo cows. Of course, the thing with wild animals is that they are marvellously stubborn. The three ponies huffed loudly, pawing the ground. Our horse communication failed to budge them from the footpath. So, we ended up walking alarmingly close to the cliff edge, trying to avoid a shoe full of horse shit. 
Horse attack & near death incidents successfully avoided we marched on along the cliff, until we made it round the bay to beautiful Musselwick Sands. 

Update: come check out my adventures in Sweden and beyond over on Instagram. ⚓ 

Dale | Pembrokeshire, Wales

Dale has an artsy vibe.

Postcards are painted here, there's sculptors, potters, sketchers and watersport addicts all with perfect tans & sun-bleached manes. 

It's the kind of village-y vibe you only truly get when you're fringed by a calm bay of water & one pub to quench the entire village.

Unsurprisingly Dale is pretty friendly too.  

We stopped off the other morning - where we wiggled our toes in the water, drank big mugs of fluffy coffee & then found ourselves in a village hall come art exhibition surrounded by local pottery & kooky driftwood sculptures.  

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Trip To Tenby | Part II

Tenby is like a mixture of Brighton & Lyme Regis. 
Marrying the best of both: the quirky shops and bohemian beer gardens with beautiful Regency/Victorian buildings, a stunning beach & harbour and a rich cultural history. 

I think Tenby has an exotic air about it. The seaside town is hedged with a medieval stone wall, giving it a bit of a European-y vibe; the enclosed feel really reminded me of Dubrovnik. The town is technically foreign as it was established by the Normans and has an Anglo, Welsh, Flemish, French patchwork of a heritage. 

If you're on the South coast of the UK it's obligatory to catch mackerel and line crabs, or at least attempt to!
Crab in Dale & go mackerel fishing here, in Tenby. Tenby, itself, means little fortress of fish, so, hopefully that means a mighty seafood infused dinner.
Along with every pub indulging the menu with today's catch, other foodie pleasures include: amazing cream teas, a giant ice cream parlour & a foodie market on a Friday selling stone oven baked pizza. And sweet tie-dye t-shirts but that's another story. 

We were only there for a short time, but could happily spend a whole weekend playing rounders on the beach, scouting for pirates at the ol' lookout points and exploring the art gallery & museum. 

If you're in South Wales, go to Tenby, GO. 

Trip To Tenby | Part I

 

 

 

 

We whizzed along the country tracks, parked the car & (obviously) followed the smell of cake.

The trail lead us to a faultless factory line of five grannies, huddled in a fire station, making hundreds of Welsh cakes. Fresh from the griddle, they were tossed into a brown paper bag & dusted with sugar. 

It doesn't get more traditional than that! I got ten for £2 - warm, a little cake-y, a little scone-y, a little donut-y, these were absolutely delicious. 

We pattered down the colourful high street towards the (even more colourful) pastel infused beach front. 

After snaking through the shops & market stalls, we veered left down a dark alley past an old Tudor Merchant's House to the harbour. Where we took some polaroids, admired the lifeboat house & ate our Welsh cakes.