Mathry

The General Stores and Hilltop Village

The old General Stores still has stock on its shelves. It closed around 2009, but behind the hand-painted signage and faded façade you can make out children's toys, Cadbury's chocolate tins, Parker Super Quink ink and a box of OMO washing powder, none of it touched since the early 1980s. Out front there's a red post box and a red telephone box. The phone box is Grade II listed and now holds a community library, which is a promotion of sorts.

Mathry is a compact medieval village on a hilltop, high enough to see both the coast and the Preseli Hills. It sits just off the A487 between Fishguard and St Davids, about six miles from Fishguard, and as one local writer put it, "all roads seem to converge there."

The Farmers Arms and Coastal Walking

The pub is the Farmers Arms, family-run, with beamed ceilings, a log fire and a conservatory garden room. The menu leans traditional Welsh: signature beer-battered cod, a home-cooked roast on Sundays, a wide range of vegan and vegetarian options, and children's meals. All the food is locally sourced. Real ales are on, and the pub is listed with Pembrokeshire CAMRA. It's dog friendly and wheelchair accessible, and it fills up with Coast Path walkers who've climbed the thirty minutes up from Abercastle. Beyond the food there's live music, quiz nights, dart tournaments, karaoke, and rugby and football on the screen. The kitchen keeps particular hours, so it's worth ringing ahead on 01348 831284.

The walking is the reason most people come. Abercastle, down the hill, is a sheltered fishing cove good for kayaking, and the Pembrokeshire Coast Path runs through it. On the coast nearby stands Carreg Samson, a 5,000-year-old Neolithic burial chamber with a capstone that legend says St Samson set in place with his little finger. Short circular walks of about a mile and around two and a half run from here. A few minutes' drive the other way, in a wooded valley at Castlemorris, is Melin Tregwynt, a working woollen mill with a shop and café where you can watch the weaving and buy the blankets.

Church of the Holy Martyrs

The Church of the Holy Martyrs stands on the hilltop with panoramic coastal views. The present building went up in 1865–68 and is the fifth church on the site, retaining nothing of the earlier ones. Historian Richard Fenton recorded that the original steeple "was blown down in a storm." In the porch there's a fifth- or sixth-century Ogham stone reading "Mac Cudicel son of Caticuus lies here," and two ninth-century stones sit in the west churchyard wall.

Seven Saints and Jemima Nicholas

The name means "martyr," and the martyrs are seven baby boys the Book of Llandaff says St Teilo rescued from a river, baptised, fed on fish, and sent here to live out their lives as saints. Jemima Nicholas, who took on the French at the 1797 Battle of Fishguard, was baptised in the parish in 1755.

Bus Links and Churchyard Lore

The Strumble Shuttle bus links the village to Trefin, Porthgain, St Davids and Fishguard; the nearest station is Fishguard, five or six miles off. Buried in the churchyard is John Hearne, remembered locally as the "gentleman of the road."