The wall stands on the beach. One end of a twelfth-century church — the west entrance and its bellcote — is all that survives of St Brynach's, and it sits in a seaward graveyard at the edge of the sand, headstones and sea wall arranged around it. A scale model of a Cwm Trader, the kind of coastal vessel that once worked this coast, is displayed by the gate. Coastal Cottages of Pembrokeshire call the view "arguably one of the most iconic landscapes in Pembrokeshire," and for once the marketing is doing the church a favour rather than the other way round.
Cwm-yr-Eglwys is a cove at the foot of a wooded valley, with a stream running through the middle of it and headlands closing it in on both sides. It sits on the eastern side of the Dinas Island peninsula — which is not an island but a peninsula, joined to the mainland by the low neck the valley path crosses. The name means "Valley of the Church," which was more accurate before the sea took most of the church.
About ten people live here full-time, across 27 homes. That makes it, locally, the "lost village."
The beach is the reason to be here. It's sheltered and sandy-shingle, mostly covered at high tide, safe enough for swimming and snorkelling and good for rockpooling, with a narrow slipway for launching small boats. It has a Seaside Award and a Green Coast Award. Dogs are allowed. There's a public toilet and some parking, charged at times.
There's no pub and no shop in the cove itself. The nearest pub is a twenty-minute walk away, and it's a good one to walk to. The Sailors' Safety sits right on the sand at Pwllgwaelod, reached by the flat 1.25-mile valley path — a purpose-built, level route through woodland that's wheelchair- and pushchair-friendly, which is rare on this coast. The pub does Pembrokeshire seafood with foraged ingredients: crab pasta, seafood chowder, lobster, mussels, fish and chips, fish finger sandwiches, and a nut or beef roast. Reviews warn it's packed at lunch and dinner, so book. The name refers to a light once kept burning as a guide to ships "or to warn smugglers that the revenue men were around."
The harder walk is the Dinas Island circular, about three miles of coast path over high cliffs to the 142-metre summit of Pen y Fan, with views across Cardigan Bay and Fishguard Bay and a decent chance of seals, choughs and seabirds. The cove has its own microclimate — sheltered enough to be "a few degrees warmer and drier than other parts of the Pembrokeshire coast," which is why the trees grow the way they do.
For the shop, part-time post office, garage and chip shop, you go a mile up to Dinas Cross, signed off the A487 between Fishguard and Newport. The T5 bus runs that corridor; the nearest station is Fishguard, six or seven miles west.
For the first two weeks of August the regatta takes over — sailing and rowing races, long-distance swims, sea fishing, diving competitions, and, for anyone under the age of caring who wins, a sandcastle-building contest.