Milford Haven

Life around the marina

The Griffin sits at the water's edge by the slipway, with a handful of outside seats close enough to the waterway that you can watch boats come and go over a plate of locally caught fish and a Welsh real ale. Most things in Milford Haven arrange themselves around the water like this. The town climbs up from the marina in terraced streets on a grid, New England-style architecture on the north shore of one of the deepest natural harbours in the world.

That harbour is a ria — a river valley drowned when the last ice age ended — and the marina is now the town's front room. Milford Waterfront is a regenerated dock quarter of shops, galleries, cafes and restaurants running from Italian pizza to fresh seafood to vegan, all facing the boats. Martha's Vineyard, a family-run bar and restaurant along the same waterfront, does locally sourced fish and seafood with the marina in front of you.

Pubs beyond the waterfront

Away from the waterfront the pubs get more local. The Kimberley takes dogs in the bar and the beer garden, keeps a well-stocked bar, and runs to pool, darts and live sport; it describes itself as ideal for walkers and sailors, which covers most of who comes through. Nos Da on Victoria Road was recently refurbished under new management and stocks craft beer from around the world, aiming to become "a local Ale mecca for Milford." Out in the village of Priory, the Priory Inn occupies part of a 12th-century Benedictine priory, which is a long tenure for a pub.

West on the Coast Path

The Pembrokeshire Coast Path runs straight through the town. Head west and it passes the docks to Hakin and Gelliswick Bay, a small working beach where several oil pipelines come ashore. Further on, the flat coastal walk to Sandy Haven ends at a cliff-backed rocky beach with stepping stones, a crab bridge and rock pools. The Sandy Haven crossing is the lowest point of the entire 186-mile Coast Path, six feet above sea level. Keep going and you reach Dale, at the mouth of the haven.

St Katharine's maritime relics

At the head of Hamilton Terrace stands the Church of St Katharine, built 1803 to 1808 and attributed to French shipwrights. Inside there is a porphyry Egyptian urn that Charles Greville brought over intending it as the font, until the bishop rejected it, and a piece of the mainmast of the French flagship *L'Orient*, blown up at the Battle of the Nile. A local legend that Nelson laid the foundation stone is, the church record notes, "without foundation."

Whalers, streets and Shakespeare

The town itself was founded in 1790 by Sir William Hamilton and laid out to an American grid. In 1793 his nephew persuaded Quaker whaling families from Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard to relocate — the Folgers and the Starbucks among them, which is why there is a Starbuck Road. The whaling never really took. Shakespeare had set part of *Cymbeline* here, with Imogen longing for "this same blessed Milford," and the museum, housed in an old whale-oil store, has taken the town's oldest compliment for its name: "Thou Blessed Milford!"