Peering off the ragged escarpments of southwest Wales into the teeth of the Atlantic gulf stream, a hiker along the 186-mile Pembrokeshire Coast National Path becomes an unofficial greeter of the weather that will sweep across the island of Great Britain in the ensuing hours and days. Much—but not all—of this weather is wet in varying, delicately articulated degrees. Certainly any North American will recognize the familiar bwrw glaw, or “striking rain.” But during a week’s worth of hiking and backpacking along the trail in early June, what is even more striking yet is the frequency of gwlithlaw (rainy dew), glaw mân (tiny rain), and smwc o law (smoke of rain), to cite but three examples from Wales’ precipitation lexicon. One doesn’t walk through Wales so much as wade into it.
Ironically, it is hardly the weather at all that accounts for the sense of wading through a mysterious, alluring place. Although nominally an English-speaking nation since Henry VIII’s Act of Union of 1538 forcibly “consolidated” the Welsh into an English-dominated Great Britain, Wales maintains its thousands-year-old language in quite an active state of repair. It is not long before what looks to be a simple hike from Tenby to Stackpole Key, then to St. Bride’s to Solva to St. David’s, liquefies into a bubbling, roiling stream of language that floats the visitor along from Dinbych-y-pysgod to Cei Ystagbwll, then to San Ffraid to Solfach to Tyddewi.
The Pembrokeshire Coast National Path (PCNP) celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2000. It is simultaneously part of one the smallest national parks in England and Wales and one of the longest in the UK’s national trail system. Moreover, it is the only coastal path to enjoy National Trail status. This designation accounts for its nearly flawless maintenance both in terms of trail conditions themselves and with regard to mapping and signposting. Cadres of volunteers and park employees are constantly repairing and grooming sections of the trail to forestall deterioration by natural erosion and seasonal heavy use.
It is worth respecting this trail’s propensity for heavy use, by the way. Otherwise, one is likely to be wading through knots of backpackers and day-trippers at the height of the summer season. Distances are magically compressed in Wales, meaning that what appears to be a remote southwest corner of the map of Great Britain is actually only a few hour’s journey by train, bus, or car from such busy centers as Gloucestershire in the West Country and Birmingham in the Midlands. Even London is a scant four to five hours away by motorway. Accordingly, it pays to watch the school schedules. Since British schoolchildren don’t typically begin their summer holiday until mid- to late June, the last weeks of May and early weeks of June make an ideal time for hiking the PCNP in glorious near-solitude. What’s more, the wildflowers are just then in riot of bloom, the seasons are marching balmily toward midsummer, and the days are luxuriantly long, with 5 a.m. sunrises and 9:30 p.m. sunsets.
The experienced hiker will recognize that the PCNP’s overall length of just under 200 miles makes for 12 to 15 days of continuous, unrushed hiking from the southern trailhead at Amroth, near Tenby, to the northern one at St. Dogmaels, near Cardigan. Generally speaking, the trail rides 125 to 150 feet above the surging ocean below. For the most part, one’s feet are mere inches from the precipice so that a heady yet manageable sense of vertigo adds constantly to the delight. Beware the assumption that all this is level coastal walking; along this dramatic boundary between land and sea, a hiker completing the entire path will have climbed over 30,000 feet’s worth of strenuous ascents.
Rounding every bend and corner reveals spectacular sights over harsh cliff faces whose primordial rocks are bent, folded, and tortured into a ludicrous, all-too-Welsh alphabet of M’s, W’s, U’s, and T’s. Tidal flats reaching 1,000 yards out to sea disappear completely twice a day during 25-foot-high tides. Awe-striking blow-holes, many of whose fury can be seen and heard from a half-mile offshore, litter the edges of the many islands and drowned rocks, like The Bitches off St. David’s Head, that hone the best Welsh sailors and dispatch the rest.
What is particularly unusual by North American standards is the ease with which a party of hikers can “cherry pick” sections of the trail to accommodate any length of stay. My own week-long visit last year consisted of two full days’ hiking east and west of Tenby along the southern coast, then a three-day traipse along the wild west coast extending from Dale via St. Bride’s, Newgale, and Solfa to St. David’s. For a final two days, our party radiated out from a campsite outside Newport-Pembrokeshire to take in Dinas Head and the storied Preseli Hills before reaching the trail’s northern endpoint at Poppit Sands below St. Dogmaels.
For the most part, our nights were spent at privately owned, extremely affordable—even cheap—campsites sectioned out of pastures beside the trail. Showers and potable water are the rule rather than the exception here. Just the same, we owed two memorable evenings to bed-and-breakfast establishments: The Old Printing House in Solva and Glan-y-Môr B&B on the southern outskirts of St. David’s—the smallest cathedral city in Great Britain. We made quite sure, of course, that every evening was sited within invigorating walking distance to an array of those traditional pubs that still observe the practice of serving cask-conditioned, “living” ale alongside hearty portions of such British staples as shepherd’s pie, toad in the hole, and bubble and squeak.
The B&Bs, along with many campsites, are listed in a comprehensive accommodations guide updated annually by the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park authority (www.pembrokeshirecoast.org/). There is much additional literature about the PCNP available both for free and for a fee from the authority. But by far the most comprehensive and useful guide is Brian John’s Pembrokeshire Coast Path book in the National Trail Guide series, published by the UK’s premier mapmaker, the Ordinance Survey (www.ordsvy.gov.uk/). The OS naturally publishes the best maps of the trail as well, and these are the excruciatingly detailed “Outdoor Leisure Series” sheets 35 and 36 (titled North and South Pembrokeshire, respectively).
Making one’s way to the PCNP from the States is as simple as booking round-trip air connections to London, then arranging train and bus transportation out of either Heathrow or Gatwick. BritRail’s “Freedom of Wales FlexiPass” at $85 for up to eight days’ train and bus travel ($159 for up to 15 days) is perhaps the best public transportation option for getting back and forth between Wales and London (www.britrail.com/ or www.raileurope.com/us/). Currently, published round-trip airfares to London from Nashville range from about $825-850 for May, $930-960 for June. Two particularly helpful additional resources concerning all aspects of travel to Britain and Wales are the Wales Tourist Board (www.visitwales.com) and the British Tourist Authority (www.travelbritain.org).
In one sense, the remote southwest corner of Wales represented by the PCNP is hardly representative of the surprising variety of traditions and landscape that comprise tiny Wales. After all, this is a country much bigger than its borders, much prouder of itself than its ability to influence the world might recommend. Considered another way, however, the PCNP is an ideal way to meet Wales for the first time. The trail threads its way along a thrilling borderland between sea and sky, through bustling villages, and atop lonely headlands. For an outdoor-oriented vacation, the PCNP combines the best of two worlds: a challenging walk that is easy to arrange.
—Marc K. Stengel
