Pembrokeshire is a county rather than a town, so “day trips” here means something different: the county itself is the day-trip territory, and it takes a fortnight to see properly. Beyond its borders, Ceredigion is to the north-east, Carmarthenshire east, and the Gower and the Brecon Beacons within a couple of hours.
The county is compact — an hour from Amroth in the south-east to St Dogmaels in the north — but the roads are lanes and the coast is deeply indented, so allow more time than the distances suggest.
Britain’s smallest city, at the western tip. The cathedral sits in a hollow so that it could not be seen by sea raiders, and it is one of the great buildings of Wales; the Bishop’s Palace ruin stands beside it. Around the city: Whitesands Bay, St Non’s Chapel, St Davids Head, and boats from St Justinians round Ramsey Island.
A full day, and the best single destination in the county.
Pembroke Castle is the biggest in west Wales — a vast round keep, a gatehouse, wall walks and a natural cavern beneath, and the birthplace of Henry VII. Nearby, Carew Castle combines a Norman castle with an Elizabethan house and a restored tidal mill, and Lamphey Bishop’s Palace is a short drive.
South of Pembroke, the Castlemartin coast has St Govan’s Chapel, the Green Bridge of Wales and the Elegug Stacks, and the Stackpole Estate has Barafundle and the lily ponds. This is the best half of the county for a single day.
The south-east corner, and the busiest part of Pembrokeshire. Tenby is a walled medieval town on a headland with three beaches, pastel houses above the harbour and boats to Caldey Island and its monastery. Saundersfoot next door has a harbour and a beach, and Folly Farm, the Dinosaur Park and Heatherton are all within a few kilometres.
Fishguard, Newport and St Dogmaels in the north are quieter and more Welsh-speaking than the south. Inland, the Preseli Hills hold Pentre Ifan — the finest neolithic burial chamber in Wales — bronze age cairns along the Golden Road, and the outcrops from which the Stonehenge bluestones were quarried. Castell Henllys is a reconstructed Iron Age village nearby.
Almost nobody goes. It is the best half day in the county for anyone tired of beaches.
The drowned river valley behind Milford Haven — wooded creeks, quiet villages at Lawrenny and Landshipping, Upton Castle Gardens, and a landscape completely unlike the coast. Locals call it the secret waterway and they are not wrong.
Skomer for puffins between April and July, from Martin’s Haven. Ramsey for seals and choughs, from St Justinians. Caldey for the monastery, from Tenby. Grassholm for one of the world’s largest gannet colonies, on a round-island trip. Our islands guide covers the boats and the seasons.
North-east, over the Teifi. Cardigan has a restored castle and the Welsh Wildlife Centre on the marshes below it; Cilgerran Castle stands above a gorge upriver; and the coast north to Mwnt, New Quay and Aberaeron is beautiful, quiet and the best place in Wales for bottlenose dolphins, which are resident in Cardigan Bay and regularly seen from the harbour walls.
East. The National Botanic Garden of Wales with its great glasshouse, Aberglasney’s gardens, Carreg Cennen castle on its crag, Laugharne with Dylan Thomas’s boathouse, and the National Wool Museum at Dre-fach Felindre. An hour or so from most of Pembrokeshire.
An hour and a half east past Swansea. Britain’s first designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, with Rhossili Bay and Three Cliffs Bay among the finest beaches in Europe.
Two hours east. Mountains, waterfalls at Ystradfellte, the Dan-yr-Ogof show caves and one of Europe’s best dark sky reserves.
Genuinely possible. Ferries run from Pembroke Dock and Fishguard to Rosslare, taking a few hours, which makes a long day trip or an easy add-on to a Pembrokeshire trip.
The main line from Cardiff and Swansea runs through Carmarthen to Haverfordwest, Milford Haven, Pembroke Dock and Fishguard, with a branch to Tenby and Saundersfoot along the south coast. That covers the main towns.
For the coast, the seasonal coastal bus services — the Puffin Shuttle, the Strumble Shuttle, the Poppit Rocket and the Coastal Cruiser — link the trailheads and the villages and are designed for Coast Path walkers. They are cheap and they are the reason a car-free walking holiday works here.
Inland and in the Preselis, services are thin. Check timetables before relying on them, and note that they reduce sharply outside the summer. Our getting here page has more.
The south coast day. Pembroke Castle in the morning, then west along the Castlemartin coast to St Govan’s Chapel and the Green Bridge of Wales — checking the range firing times first — and finish on the Stackpole Estate at Broad Haven South and Barafundle. A castle, a chapel in a cliff, a natural arch and two of the best beaches in Britain, in twenty-five kilometres of driving.
The St Davids day. The cathedral and the Bishop’s Palace in the morning, lunch in the city, and the afternoon on the peninsula — Whitesands, the walk out to St Davids Head, and St Non’s Chapel on the cliff. If the boats are running, swap the afternoon for a round-island trip to Ramsey.
The northern day. Pentre Ifan and the Golden Road in the Preselis in the morning, Castell Henllys for the Iron Age village, then down to the coast at Newport and Ceibwr Bay. Prehistory, hills and an empty coast, and you will see almost nobody.
The county’s road network is a spine and a lot of lanes. The A40 and A477 are the fast routes; everything coastal is single carriageway with hedges, and the villages are slow. Journey times are routinely half as long again as the distance suggests.
Summer weekends and the school holidays are busy on the south coast around Tenby and Saundersfoot, and the popular car parks — Stackpole Quay, Marloes, Whitesands, Barafundle’s approach — fill by mid-morning. The north and the interior stay quiet all year.
Worth understanding before you plan a week, because it affects where you stay. The south — Tenby, Saundersfoot, Pembroke, Manorbier — is busier, warmer, more anglicised and better supplied with family attractions. It is where most visitors go, and the Landsker Line, an informal linguistic and cultural border dating from the Norman settlement, still roughly separates it from the north.
The north — St Davids, Fishguard, Newport, the Preselis — is quieter, more Welsh-speaking, wilder and considerably less visited. The coast is higher, the beaches are emptier and the prehistory is denser.
A week split between the two gives you a much better sense of Pembrokeshire than a week in either.
St Davids and its peninsula for a full day; Stackpole and the Castlemartin coast for the south; the Preselis if you want to escape the coast.
About an hour from end to end on the main roads, considerably longer on the coastal lanes.
Yes, by ferry from Pembroke Dock or Fishguard to Rosslare.
Cardigan Bay, north of the county — New Quay and the Ceredigion coast have a resident bottlenose population and boat trips to match.
For the interior and the smaller coves, more or less. For the Coast Path and the main towns, the trains and the coastal buses work well.