Bosherston

The Village Inn and Lily Ponds

St Govan's Country Inn sits at the edge of the village, one large room split between a dining side and a lounge side with sofas, exposed beams, horse brasses and a stone fireplace with a log burner. It is the only pub in Bosherston, which puts a certain amount of pressure on it, and the kitchen answers by running a menu that goes, in its own words, from cawl to calamari. There are grills, local seafood, several vegetarian options, meat and veggie curries, and occasional curry buffet nights. Sunday lunch is done. The ales are cask-conditioned — three changing beers and two regulars — and well-behaved dogs are welcome in the designated areas. There's a beer garden for when the weather cooperates.

Step outside and you are more or less on top of the Bosherston Lily Ponds. These are three limestone valleys dammed in the 1780s and 1860s to make a landscape garden for a house that no longer exists. In June and July hundreds of water lilies flower across the eighty acres, crossed by a causeway and the Eight Arch Bridge. It is flat, easy walking, and one of the better places in Britain to see wild otters, if you are patient and quiet.

Stackpole Court and Auntie Vi

The house they were built for was Stackpole Court, a Palladian pile put up by the Campbells in 1735. During the war the MoD requisitioned half the estate for the Castlemartin firing range and billeted troops in the Court, who stripped the roof lead, which let in the damp, which brought the dry rot. The house was demolished in 1963 and its stone carted off to build the Milford Haven oil refinery. The lily ponds are, in effect, the garden of a ghost.

By the National Trust car park stands Ye Olde Worlde Café, also known as the Bosh Tea Rooms — cream teas, loose-leaf tea, paninis and vegan desserts, in a Grade II listed cottage from 1834. It was opened as a tearoom in 1922, and from 1952 run for decades by Vi Weston, known to everyone as Auntie Vi. It closed through 2025 for renovation, which the Tenby Today called "the end of an era."

Cliff Paths and Beaches

The walking is the reason most people come. A path leads two miles south to St Govan's Chapel, a tiny hermit's cell wedged into the cliffs, reached by worn stone steps that are said to number 52 and are said never to come out the same counted up as down. A longer circular of about six and a half miles links the ponds to Broad Haven South, Stackpole Head and Barafundle Bay — a beach reachable only on foot and regularly voted one of the most beautiful in the world.

The Medieval Church

St Michael and All Angels, the village church, is late thirteenth-century Norman and holds a fourteenth-century Crusader effigy and a tomb said to belong to a Dowager Duchess of Buckingham. Its Welsh name, Llanfihangel-clogwyn-gofan, means "St Michael above the cliffs of St Gofan."

Getting There in Early Summer

Pembroke and its station are five miles north. Buses are limited and a car is the practical way in. Come in early summer, when the lilies are out and the otters are working the ponds at dusk.