Pembrokeshire
With its wild and rugged landscape, stunning coastal scenery and plenty of sheep, Pembrokeshire proves the perfect destination for a tough and beautiful ride
We only ride 100m before I want to stop and enjoy the view. Rolling out onto a narrow, open pontoon of tarmac, we’re crossing a wide, reed-covered riverbed. To our left a broad sky stretches out over marshy grassland that has tried but failed to keep the river from flowing into the Irish Sea just beyond. To our right I catch a glimpse of tall, stooped birds huddling in the sparkling ripples of the shallows.
Herons, I assume, but there’s no time to stop and twitch, as I have to keep pedalling to keep up with my guide for the day, Tour of Pembrokeshire sportive organiser and local bike shop owner Peter Walker. No doubt such idyllic views are more commonplace for Peter – who has organised today’s highlight loop to showcase his sportive – but more to the point, after a delicious breakfast-induced delay in Newport (the little seaside resort, not the city near Cardiff), it’s almost 11am and we’ve only just started our 36-mile lumpy ride.
Off the bridge we start climbing a narrow lane sheltered from the westerlies and hoped-for sea views by thick hedges. What I can see, glancing back, is a line of hills with the occasional rounded peak, way behind us on the southern horizon beyond Newport.
“We’ll be coming over those later,” says Peter. “That’s the highest point in the whole of Pembrokeshire.”
Soon we join a supposedly bigger ‘C’ road and continue our gentle ascent. Until at last, about 6km in, where the hedgerows have shrunk to tufty banks, the sea reveals itself as a slightly darker blue smear under the grey-blue winter sky. Only now, as we top out at 170-odd metres above sea level, does the road start to tilt down again.
Little by little, more of the rugged coastline starts to appear, with dark cliffs plunging into the foamy sea, the headland on the other side of Pwllygranant Bay reaching out in the distance.
A sharp left at a solitary-looking whitewashed cottage marks a nosedive towards the cliffs, stopped only by a severe right-hander. It’s all too tempting to blast down the last few hundred metres to the bottom, but first we stop to give the view our full attention.
The other side of the bank to our left, the grass disappears into fresh air with nothing but the Irish Sea far below. Up ahead, still mostly hidden, is the entrance to the narrow, box-like Ceibwr Bay, beyond which successive outcrops of black serrated cliffside