Pembrokeshire As part of Judith's ongoing mission to visit as many Holiday Property Bond properties as possible, and with the weather forecast looking extremely promising (for March) we booked a very last minute weekend at St. Brides Castle on the Pembrokeshire Coast.
Arrived Friday - In retrospect, driving from Hampshire to the South West corner of Wales on the Friday afternoon of a sunny Mother's Day weekend was never going to be a smart idea. We crossed the Severn Bridge a mere 90 minutes after leaving home, which was a good start, but then it took us over four hours to drive across South Wales! Still, we at least managed to arrive in time for our dinner reservation (just).Here's my car parked outside our apartment.
Apartment The apartment that we booked was the ony accommodation left and we think this might have had something to do with the long, narrow staircase it was necessary to ascend to get to it. It was lucky we were only there for the weekend and so didn't have much luggage.
Dinner Dinner in the on-site Byron's Bistro was excellent. Even if we'd been staying all week I don't think I'd have run out of tasty looking menu choices.Judith couldn't decide which dessert to have so she had two!(She didn't really. One of those is mine.)
Pool After dinner we went for a quick look around the castle. This is their lovely looking swimming pool.
Stars As it was clear and there was no moon, I thought I'd pop outside and take a few photos. The sky was pretty good, but not as good as I'd hoped given the remoteness of our location. There were lots of stars out, but no sign at all of the Milky Way.This is the view of the castle as you approach up their long drive.
Castle And this is the back of the castle.
Woods About a third of a mile from the castle, the drive goes through a wood (did I mention their drive is really long!). So I walked down there to take a few photos. With no moon it was really quite dark indeed. The light in the photo is from my torch.
Ruins In the woods were the remains of a house. This really was a bit Blair Witch. Time to retreat to the comfort of my apartment.
Apartment Saturday - This is the bit of the castle that our apartment was in. It occupied the top two floors of this building. Basically, it was enormous.See the round window at the top...
Bathroom That's the window into our top floor bathroom. Here's the bathroom.
Bathroom Window A better view of the window.
Bathroom View And the view out of the bathroom window.
Top Floor Bedroom This is the bedroom that's also on the top floor.
Bedroom View And the view from the window.
Hall/Landing Heading down the stairs to the hall/landing that runs the length of the apartment.
Hall/Landing I paced this out and I reckon the hall/landing is almost 60 feet long!
Kitchen Our spacious and well equipped kitchen.
Living Room Our living room.
Living Room From the living room looking through into the kitchen. I think it would be fair to say that our apartment was pretty epic.
Window A miscellanous window view. I thought it just looked nice.
Outside Having messed about indoors for long enough, it was time to head outside into the lovely sunshine for walk. Here's Judith on the drive in front of the castle.
Castle A view of the castle from a couple of hundred yards down the drive.
St. Bride's Church We passed through the grounds of St. Bride's Church as we left the castle grounds.
St. Bride's Haven The view down St. Bride's Haven.
Cliffs The whole coast for as far as we could see looked like this in both directions.
Wall An "interesting" wall on the coastal path.
No Wall The gap in the wall that Judith is standing in front of is due to the fact that the wall (and the ground the wall was standing on) has fallen into the sea!
Portrait Playing with "portrait" mode on my phone to make the background go all blurry.
Coastal Path A beautiful view on the coastal path.
Coastal Path
"Portrait" mode again
Musselwick Sands There are very few places along the coast where one can actually get down to sea level. The beautiful Musselwick Sands is one of them. We couldn't actually see how you got off the cliffs onto the beach, but I could see some foot prints in the sand so it must be possible. Although we saw no people there while we were passing.
Inland Finally the path turned away from the coast.
Marloes Chapel About half a mile inland is the pretty and beautifully presented village of Marloes. This is their chapel.
Kensington Clock Tower The Kensington Clock Tower in Marloes. We sat on a bench here for a few minutes while we waited for the local pub to open at midday.
Lobster Pot We had a very nice lunch in sunshine in the garden of The Lobster Pot.
Double Dragon Me in "portrait" mode, with a lovely pint of Double Dragon.
Walking The trail back to the castle was inland, so not so much to see as on the coastal path.
Paving Some interesting paving in the courtyard outside our apartment.
Woods As it was still only mid-afternoon, Judith decided to go for a swim. As I had negligently forgotten to pack my swimming shorts, I decided to go out for another walk. This was in the woods immediately next to the castle (as opposed to the ones I'd walked to in the dark last night to photograph the ruined house).
Castle The view of the castle from the woods. There were lots of flowers out. Very pretty.
Tractor Seagulls following the tractor ploughing the field.
Castle View The view of the castle from across St. Bride's Haven. Tricky straight-into-the-sun shot that is.
Little Haven After an hour or so I arrived at Little Haven, which is where the trail turns inland before heading back to the castle. As the inland bit of this morning's trail was a bit dull compared to the coastal path, I returned to the castle on the coastal path.
Dylan's Bistro We were having dinner in Dylan's Bistro again in the evening. As we'd booked late, we had to have a fairly early slot (7pm), so we were the first to arrive!
Sunset Unfortunately 7pm was also pretty much the time the sun was going down. I could just see the tops of some lovely looking sunset coloured clouds over the tops of the buildings. Doh! That would have been fabulous from the coastal path.
Stars Back outside after dinner to take a few more photos of the stars.
Stars I think there's almost a hint of the Milky Way in this photo. Almost.
Castle In the woods next to the castle. Not many stars in this photo.
Trees Trees in the woods next to the castle.
Conservatory Sunday - Going home day, but we had some time to look around the castle before we left. This is The Conservatory. Very warm in here as you might expect.
The Snooker Room This is The Snooker Room.
The Library This is The Library.
Library View This is the view from The Library.
Castle There was just time for a quick walk in the castle grounds before we packed the car and headed off.
Castle Panorama
Narrow! The most remarkable thing about this photo (in my opinion) isn't how narrow this two-way road is (although that is quite remarkable). It's the fact that someone has bothered to paint double yellow lines down both sides of it. The road is barely as wide as my car!
Marloes Sands At the end of the narrow road was a (National Trust) car park. So we parked there and about fifteen minutes walk away is Marloes Sands.
Marloes Sands The view along Marloes Sands in the other direction.Then it was time to get in the car and head home. The A40 back to the Severn Bridge is a much more relaxing and scenic drive than the A48/M4 (especially if you're in a small, noisy convertible).We had a lovely short stay at St. Brides Castle and are very much looking forward to going back again for a longer visit.