Walking the Pembrokeshire Coast Path – Freshwater East to Broad Haven South

After a three month break, it is time to get going again, though as we are both carrying a bit of Christmas excess I took notice of the complaints from my co-walker about the length of the walks and made it a bit shorter this time. The small coastal buses only run on Thursdays and Saturdays in the winter, so we seized upon a Saturday with a reasonable weather forecast and drove to the far end of the county, cutting it rather fine as Ian was still putting his boots on when the bus arrived. A bumpy 30 minutes later and we were back at Freshwater East, no longer in autumn sunshine but under lowering cloud with a strongish westerly wind. It was dry and not particularly cold though, not bad at all for January.

There were a few ups and downs on the first section, but not too challenging. Looking back from Stackpole Quay, we could see the wonderful rock layers that we had been walking over.

The cafe at Stackpole was closed for the winter so we carried on to Barafundle to eat our sandwiches. Barafundle was named as one of the best beaches in the world and now gets too many visitors in summer, but it was ok today.

Beyond Barafundle the geology and landscape changes – almost level turf, nibbled by sheep, with sudden slumps where a cave has collapsed way below. Easy walking until we clambered down rocks onto Broad Haven, then a tough few minutes up through soft deep sand back to the car. 6.5 miles, not very impressive.