Pembrokeshire is one of the cheapest holiday counties in Britain, provided you are prepared to be outdoors. Every beach is free. The Coast Path is free for all 190 miles of it. A chapel built into a cliff, a natural rock arch, an Iron Age promontory fort, a flooded quarry the colour of a swimming pool and the hills the Stonehenge bluestones came from all cost nothing.
What you do pay for is parking, and occasionally a boat.
There are more than fifty in the county and every one is free. A selection:
Barafundle Bay, reached only on foot from Stackpole Quay, regularly named among the best beaches in Britain.
Broad Haven South, with Church Rock standing offshore, beside the Bosherston lily ponds.
Whitesands Bay near St Davids, Blue Flag and the main surf beach on the peninsula.
Marloes Sands, backed by spectacularly folded rock strata.
Newgale, two miles of sand and shingle in St Bride’s Bay.
Freshwater West, the big Atlantic beach on the south coast, used as a film location more than once.
Abereiddi, black-sand and fossil-rich, next to the Blue Lagoon.
Only parking costs anything, and the National Trust car parks are free to members. Our beaches guide has the full list.
Roughly 190 miles of waymarked clifftop from Amroth to St Dogmaels, free from end to end, and generally considered the finest coastal walk in Britain. The whole of it is inside a national park.
The best free sections: Stackpole to Barafundle, St Davids Head, the Marloes Peninsula, Strumble Head, and the Castlemartin coast past St Govan’s and the Green Bridge when the range is not firing.
St Govan’s Chapel — a thirteenth-century chapel built into a cleft in the limestone cliff, twenty feet by twelve, reached by worn stone steps. Free, extraordinary and fifteen minutes from the car park. Closed when the Castlemartin range is firing.
The Green Bridge of Wales — a huge natural limestone arch on the same stretch of coast, with a viewing platform.
The Elegug Stacks beside it, covered in guillemots between April and July.
The Blue Lagoon at Abereiddi — a slate quarry breached by the sea in the 1900s, now a startlingly blue pool used for coasteering and cliff diving. Free to look at, free to swim in if you know what you are doing.
Porthgain, next door, is a stone-built industrial harbour with the brick hoppers of the quarry works still standing above it.
Strumble Head lighthouse, on an island reached by a footbridge, and the best seabird and cetacean watching point in Wales.
Pembrokeshire has an extraordinary density of it, and nearly all of it is open.
Pentre Ifan, in the Preselis, is the finest neolithic burial chamber in Wales — a sixteen-tonne capstone balanced on three uprights, free and open at all times.
Carreg Samson, near Abercastle, is another.
The Preseli Hills themselves are open access, with the Golden Road ridge path running past bronze age cairns and stone circles. It was from these hills that the Stonehenge bluestones came, which is a reasonable thing to think about while walking on them.
Coetan Arthur on St Davids Head, and the Iron Age fort and field system around it.
St Davids Cathedral is free to enter with a suggested donation, and it is one of the great buildings of Wales — built in a hollow so that it could not be seen from the sea. The ruined Bishop’s Palace beside it charges.
St Non’s Chapel and Well, on the cliff below the city, marks the traditional birthplace of St David.
Llawhaden Castle is a substantial free ruin in the middle of the county.
Milford Waterfront and the harbours at Saundersfoot, Solva and Lower Fishguard are all free to walk round.
Grey seals pup on the beaches below the cliffs from late August through the autumn — Ramsey Sound, Strumble and the north coast are the places, and they can be watched from the clifftop for nothing.
Seabirds — guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes and fulmars — crowd the cliffs from April to July, and the Elegug Stacks are the best free viewing.
Choughs are common on this coast.
Porpoises and dolphins are regular in the tide races off Strumble and Ramsey and can be seen from land with patience.
Puffins need a boat to Skomer, which is not free — see our islands guide.
Parking. The National Trust and National Park car parks at Stackpole, Marloes, Whitesands, Broad Haven South and elsewhere all charge, and if you are here for a week and driving to a different beach every day it adds up. National Trust membership pays for itself quickly in this county.
The coastal bus services — the Puffin Shuttle, the Strumble Shuttle, the Poppit Rocket and the Coastal Cruiser — are cheap, run in season, and are designed for walkers. They are the way to avoid the parking problem entirely.
Start at Bosherston, walk the lily ponds down to Broad Haven South for Church Rock, then along the coast to Barafundle and Stackpole Quay. Come back over the top. Ten kilometres, one of the best days on the Welsh coast, and nothing to pay but the car park.
Or go north: Whitesands to St Davids Head in the morning, the cathedral in the afternoon, and Abereiddi’s Blue Lagoon and Porthgain in the evening light.
The first free day did the south. The second should go to the Preseli Hills, which almost no visitor climbs and which cost nothing at all. Park at one of the lay-bys on the ridge road, walk the Golden Road past bronze age cairns to Carn Menyn, and look at the outcrops from which the Stonehenge bluestones were quarried and dragged, somehow, to Wiltshire.
Add Pentre Ifan — the finest neolithic burial chamber in Wales, a sixteen-tonne capstone poised on three uprights, free and open at all hours — and you have a half day of prehistory with nobody else on it.
Finish on the north coast at Ceibwr Bay and the Witches’ Cauldron, a collapsed sea cave near Moylegrove, or at Strumble Head for seals and porpoises from the lighthouse.
Worth doing the arithmetic. The Trust owns a very large share of the Pembrokeshire coast — Stackpole, Marloes, Martin’s Haven, Colby Woodland Garden, Tudor Merchant’s House in Tenby and a string of coastal car parks. The land is free to everyone; what membership buys is the parking, and in a county where you drive to a different beach every day, that is most of the cost.
For a week here with a car, a membership generally pays for itself.
The county’s calendar carries a good deal that costs nothing. Village and harbour regattas run all summer. The Really Wild Festival at St Davids and a run of food and music festivals have free fringes. And in the north, Fishguard and Newport hold events through the season that are free to wander into.
Yes, all of them. Only parking is charged.
Yes, and open at all times except when the Castlemartin firing range is in use.
Entry is free with a suggested donation. The Bishop’s Palace next door charges.
From the clifftops at Ramsey Sound, Strumble Head and along the north coast, particularly from late August when the pups appear.
Entirely — all 190 miles of it.