Neyland

Rails, Quay and Estuary

The broad-gauge rails that ring the quay were designed by Brunel, and they are now safety barriers. This is a good introduction to Neyland, a town built almost entirely so that a railway could reach deep water, and then largely abandoned when the railway went elsewhere. The marina where yachts now bob sits on the old railway yard. The 9-mile Brunel Trail that leaves it follows the trackbed of the line that made the place.

You are on the north bank of the River Cleddau, at the upstream end of the Milford Haven estuary, looking across the water at Pembroke Dock. There's a marina, wooded creeks, and a lot of estuary.

Two Pubs and a Waterside Meal

The Coburg Inn on the High Street is a drinkers' pub with boat pictures on the walls — CAMRA's phrase, and hard to improve on. It serves real ale and no meals, only snacks, but the arrangement is that you fetch a Chinese or fish and chips from along the road and eat it in the pub with a pint. There's a beer garden. The Forresters Arms on Kensington Road is a recently refurbished community local, also CAMRA-listed, doing a pensioners' lunch on Wednesdays and Fridays.

For a proper meal, walk a mile along the Coast Path to the Ferry House Inn at Hazelbeach, which the same family has run for over sixty years. The menu changes daily and leans on what's landed nearby: home-cooked ham, Pant Mawr cheeses, award-winning Viles crab, fresh fish from Welsh Seafoods at Milford Haven Docks, Welsh beef and lamb from local butchers. Three guest beers, a conservatory with panoramic views, and portions one reviewer called huge.

From Marina to Trackbed

On Brunel Quay there's a marina café for yachties and cyclists, and waterfront places doing everything from Welsh rarebit to the catch of the day. Bike hire is at the Marina Office; Shearwater Safaris runs wildlife boat trips from the same spot.

The Brunel Trail is mostly flat, traffic-free tarmac, running through the broadleaved woodland of Westfield Pill Nature Reserve to Johnston and on to Haverfordwest. The waterside path towards the marina has otters, herons and wildflowers, and fourteen interpretation boards explaining what used to be here.

Rise, Retreat and the Church That Blew Down

What used to be here was a lot. Modern Neyland dates to 15 April 1856, when Brunel opened it as the terminus of the South Wales Railway, having chosen the site for its sheltered water. The old cottages were levelled for the port. Steamships left a Brunel-designed pontoon for Ireland, Portugal and Brazil. The renamed New Milford lasted about fifty years, until Fishguard opened for the Irish route in 1906 and took the traffic. The terminus closed under Beeching in 1964.

St Clement's is the local memory that stuck. The first one was built of corrugated iron with a pitch-pine interior, seating three hundred, and on 16 November 1928 a storm blew it to the ground. It is remembered as the church that blew down. The current one dates to 1930.

The Brunel Statue

An eight-foot bronze Brunel that stood on the quay was stolen in August 2010, presumably for scrap, and quietly replaced. He founded the town; someone weighed him in.