In a county filled with magnificent beaches, one reigns supreme. Barafundle is my favourite beach not just in Pembrokeshire, but in all of the UK. But visitors be warned: its pleasures are hard won.
Barafundle Bay scoops into a particularly empty bit of Pembrokeshire, with most of the land around it owned and preserved by The National Trust. People who don't like driving down narrow country lanes will need to brace themselves. The closest you can get to Barafundle by car is the Trust's car park at Stackpole Quay, half a mile as the crow flies. But you won't be flying. You'll be walking. And climbing. A lot.
The path from the car park slopes down to an old house now converted to loos and a cafe. Use them here, because there's nothing but nature from here on. There's a pretty, rocky cove at the bottom of the slope, but you're pushing on to something far more spectacular. First, it's a climb up through a forested hillside. When you make it to the top, you pass out of the tree cover onto an exquisite, grassy headland with dramatic views up and down the Pembrokeshire coast. On a clear day you can see all the way to the Gower Peninsula.
Here's where you'll find most of the half mile, crossing a mostly flat and springy turf. It would be easy to become so overwhelmed by the land and sea scapes that you forgot to look where you were going, but that wouldn't be a great idea. Sheep and cliff-dwelling critters have left dents that could provoke stumbles, and two much of a roll could send you over the cliffs.
Your goal is a stone wall punctuated by an arch that you'll find as the land starts to slope again. Then it's another steep set of stairs ... these built against the side of the cliffs ... before you get down onto the beach itself.
Your efforts will be richly rewarded. The sand is golden and almost universal, only broken in a few places by sprays of pebbles and larger boulders at the beach edge that are convenient for drying clothes upon. Dramatic stone cliffs rise on each side while high, grass-covered dunes screen the back of the beach. The geology makes Barafundle a natural sun trap; enclosed on three sides you're screened from the wind unless it's coming directly from the East.
The effort required to get here has a natural screening effect on crowds. People tend not to attempt it with small children ... I suspect the distance to facilities is too daunting ... and the kids who do manage to get here seem better behaved than the average. The result: even on sunny, gorgeous weekend days there's usually plenty of margin between visitors and it's never particularly noisy.
Swimming in any waters off the UK is not for the faint hearted, but Barafundle is better than most options. The tide is gentle and the bay shallow, so after a long, hot summer it's warmer than other bits of the coast might be. It's the only place in the UK I've managed to swim, fully immersed, while sober. (The other was an ill-advised, gin-assisted plunge off a sailboat into the Solent. The cold shocked me back onto the boat in seconds.) This September the waters were no colder than the average outdoor swimming pool and the waves were gentle. Yes, that is me and another of the girls in that photo. We could have bobbed for hours.
Saundersfoot and Tenby beaches are both easily accessible and almost as beautiful, but they have neither the isolation nor the sense of winning a prize upon arrival. For me, both the journey and the effort are part of what makes Barafundle so special.
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