Tenby Harbour
© KIM LEUENBERGER
A seal popped its head above the water in Porthgain’s harbour, instantly brightening a damp morning. Less than eight miles from St Davids, I’d turned off the A487 at Croesgoch, and shortly after, reached the village of Porthgain. I stood on the harbour wall, ignoring the drizzle until, eventually, the wind picked up, sea and sky merged in blurry layers of grey, and the inquisitive seal disappeared. I took refuge, then, along with walkers who had descended from the Pembrokeshire Coast Path inside The Shed, a bright café.
The harbour would once have been a busy little place. The curious remains of brick hoppers are waterside evidence of a former industrial life, used in the early 1900s to store road stone from a local quarry before loading on to ships. Now there was just the call of gulls and the wind driving me indoors in search of coffee. Reluctantly I passed on fish and chips (clearly the main event – and not just cod or haddock, but other seasonal catches). I hadn’t eaten breakfast long ago, a hasty bowl of yoghurt and fresh fruit, at my hotel, Penrhiw, just outside St Davids, on the westernmost peninsula in Wales. I could walk easily from the hotel’s front gates to St Davids Cathedral, hotel staff said. The rain was holding off first thing, and so I’d grabbed the opportunity while I could and walked along a peaceful lane, passing just a house or two before reaching the ruins of the medieval Bishop’s Palace, enigmatic beneath a heavy sky, and then the cathedral’s unmistakeable red stone exterior. This early, and out of high season, I had the cathedral’s splendour almost entirely to myself.