Little Haven

A cove remade by every tide

The streets here drop to the beach at a gradient the Coastal Cottages guide calls "as steep as a ski run," which is roughly accurate. Little Haven wraps around a shingle-backed cove at the south-east corner of St Bride's Bay, sandstone cliffs to the north and south, and at high tide the water comes right up to the pub doors. At low tide the whole thing opens out into a wide expanse of sand, and you can walk north across a bay called the Settlands all the way to Broad Haven, rockpools and crabbing spots appearing as the tide goes out.

There are three pubs in a village this small. The Swan Inn sits at the water's edge, about 200 years old, run on a no-booking basis with hours that shift by season, and it does fresh local seafood, seasonal small plates and a list of international gins. One reviewer called it "one of the most spectacularly located pubs in Pembrokeshire." It has also had a second career as a filming location, standing in for the S4C romantic comedy Cara Fi.

Three pubs, three village stories

The Castle, opened 1871, is set back from the shore and does homemade fish and chips, mussels, Welsh cawl and a Sunday roast that reviewers single out for its brisket of beef. It is reputedly haunted, a story attributed to its former use as the place where drowned sailors washed ashore were laid out to await burial. The third, St Bride's Inn, is open all year with old settle seating by a stone fireplace, a specials board, crab and lobster from the bay, and an ancient well down in the cellar.

If you want the seafood without the pub, Lobster and Mór is a café, deli and shellfish shop in the middle of the village. Most of the catch comes off the boat Wren and Rose, landed by their own lobster man Danny, and the lobster rolls and crab sandwiches use rolls baked by a local baker, Alice. There is a tea room too.

Coast paths and Skomer crossings

The Pembrokeshire Coast Path runs straight through the village, north to Broad Haven and south towards Talbenny and Marloes. For something shorter there's a 2.2-mile circular that mixes clifftop, quiet lanes and fields of livestock, the verges thick with red campion and foxgloves in early summer. From nearby Martin's Haven, boats run to Skomer, home to the third-largest breeding puffin colony in the world.

A church beyond Domesday

St Mary's church keeps its distance, sitting about a mile southwest of the village and 100 metres from the cliffs. It has a 15th-century bell and a square font recut in the 13th or 14th century, and its 1893 chancel rebuild cost £350. Pembrokeshire lay outside the border the Domesday surveyors reached, so there is no entry for the place at all.

Coal seams and lifeboat crews

This was a coal village once. Anthracite was cut nearby from the 15th century and loaded onto coasting vessels straight off the beach; the Howelston Level ran south of the village. The lifeboat station opened in 1882, closed in 1921 for want of crew, then reopened in 1967. It sits now, quietly, tucked into the village car park.