In the summer of 2019 we took our van to Wales to roam around for 4 weeks. When we got to Pembrokeshire we were flabbergasted: a beautiful piece of coast line in Wales that had everything you could ever want: sun (very rare in Wales), sea, castles, outdoor activities and quaint villages. We fell in love!
It was easy to find places to park up the van for free, like the picture above shows where we had an amazing view of the sea and the fields. We decided to spend the next day driving the sometimes very narrow roads around the peninsula and enjoy some beaches. As you can see even though it was the middle of the summer holiday it was pretty quiet still! It might have to do with the ominous clouds haha, but we stayed dry that day!
The next day we felt a lot more adventurous and headed over to St. Anne's Head for some coasteering. Coasteering is basically playing around with cliffs and sea, you get in a wetsuit, put a helmet on and jump off cliffs, swim around, climb over rocks etc. Loads of fun! This is me jumping off a 17 meter cliff. Let me tell you I had to gather some courage to make this jump, but going back over the steep rock seemed even less inviting so I took the jump!
This shows how beautiful and rugged the coast line is there:
The next day we were a bit sore and tired haha, so decided to go to the town of Pembroke to see the castle. This castle was used in the Tudor time and they give a really nice free tour of the grounds! The people volunteering there are very knowledgeable and friendly, so would really recommend giving it a visit. They also have shows on sometimes with firing old arms and sword fighting, also fun!
After a rainy day spend in the van, we were blessed with two dry days so on the second day, when we knew the rock would be dry we decided to go for a long dream of ours: sea cliff climbing! It was quite a way to walk with all the gear (ropes, harness, helmets etc) but we got to a beautiful spot. The nice thing about sea cliff climbing is you start at the top and abseil down, so you are toproping (already attached to the rope at the top) instead of having to place gear and taking the rope with you from the bottom.
It was an amazing route and plenty of sun as you can see! Would definitely come climbing there again as it was ace! As the bad weather was coming to south wales we decided to conclude our visit to Pembrokeshire and head to Snowdonia, I will make another post about that sometime as it deserves its own post!