Dinas Cross

Forge, Fire and Four Pubs

J E Thomas and Son is a working forge on Feidr Fawr, now in its fifth generation. It's the kind of business most villages lost decades ago, and Dinas Cross still has one.

The village also has four pubs, which is a lot for 815 people. The Ship Aground, in the centre, dates to around 1750 and keeps a real fire going. The food is home-cooked — the lasagne gets singled out by reviewers — and the beer garden is large, dog-friendly, and hosts live music every weekend through the summer holidays. It's rated 4.7 on Tripadvisor, where one review is titled simply "Best pub EVER." Food runs Monday to Saturday, five till nine, in summer.

Down at Pwllgwaelod beach is the Sailors' Safety, an old smuggler's inn whose name refers to a light once kept burning to guide ships to shore. The kitchen does local Pembrokeshire seafood with foraged ingredients from the shores and hedgerows, plus coffee and cakes in the tearoom — a tearoom the Wales Coast Path records as "once frequented by Dylan Thomas." It gets packed at lunch and dinner, so book. The Freemasons Arms and the Country Club make up the other two.

Food and Village Provisions

Beyond the pubs there's a fish and chip takeaway, a village shop, a partial post office, a service station that happens to be the closest fuel to Newport, and two art galleries — Coast and Wild and the David Light Gallery.

The setting is the point. Dinas Head is a peninsula almost cut off from the mainland by the wooded Cwm-yr-Eglwys valley, which gives it an island-like feel and, on the map, an island's name: Dinas Island. Four beaches ring it — Cwm-yr-Eglwys and Pwllgwaelod, both sandy; Aber Bach, sand and stone; and Aber Fforest, sand and slate with a small waterfall.

A Headland Almost Cut Adrift

The circular walk around Dinas Head is about three miles, steep and rocky, and gives you some of the best views on the North Pembrokeshire coast. It passes Needle Rock, where razorbills, guillemots and fulmars nest, and the 142-metre summit of Pen-y-Fan. Seals, dolphins and porpoises turn up offshore.

If that's too much, the valley path between Pwllgwaelod and Cwm-yr-Eglwys is level, a mile and a quarter, and wheelchair-accessible.

The Church Wall and the Sea Captains

At Cwm-yr-Eglwys the beach has the ruins of St Brynach's Old Church standing over it. The sea destroyed the chancel in 1850, the Royal Charter Storm of 1859 took the roof, and in 1880 everything was demolished but the west entrance wall, which is still there above the sand. Painters and photographers have been recording it ever since.

The stone houses through the village were largely built by sea captains, which is how Dinas Cross came to be called a sea captains' village. One local went further afield. Sgt William Batine James, born at Pencnwc Farm in 1849, emigrated to America in 1871 and was the only Welshman to die at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Road, Rail and Regatta

Dinas Cross sits on the A487 between Fishguard and Newport, each a few miles off. The nearest train is at Fishguard, and coastal buses run the road between Fishguard and Cardigan.

Each August the two hamlets hold the Cwm-yr-Eglwys regatta. The rest of the year, the best crabbing is off the jetty to the left of the beach, when the tide is in.