Harbour, sand and tramway tunnels
Saundersfoot
A Carmarthen Bay village where a golden beach, a working harbour and the old coal tramway shape the day.
- Best for
- Beach time, coastal walking and harbour history
- Give it
- A full day at an unhurried pace
- Don't miss
- The tramway tunnels towards Wiseman's Bridge
Photo: Ian S · CC BY-SA 2.0 · cropped
The Fox verdict
A lively seaside base with its history still in view
Saundersfoot gathers a Blue Flag beach, a working harbour and coast-path walks into one compact seaside visit.
The harbour was built to export anthracite, and the old tramway now provides a buggy-friendly coastal walk through tunnels towards Wiseman's Bridge. Around that industrial framework sit the village beach, watersports at Coppet Hall, boat trips, seafood and a Grade II* church in a wooded dell.
Where to go
Places in Saundersfoot
Every place below is checked against a published source, listed with what it is and how long to give it.
Local signatures
3 placesSaundersfoot Beach
The village's golden Blue Flag beach is its centrepiece, with Saundersfoot immediately behind it.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 60 minutes
- Locality
- in front of the village
Coppet Hall Beach
Coppet Hall keeps soft sand even at high tide and opens into a large expanse at low tide.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 60 minutes
- Locality
- Coppet Hall Beach
- Access
- Toilets and family changing spaces are available.
Good Trails
A watersports centre hiring wetsuits, paddleboards, kayaks and bikes, with taster lessons and SUP safaris.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 2 hours
- Locality
- at Coppet Hall
Food & drink
2 placesThe Royal Oak
One of Pembrokeshire's oldest surviving watering holes, serving modern British dishes, pub classics and seafood with six real ales on tap.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 90 minutes
- Locality
- Wogan Terrace
Lan y Môr
A Michelin Guide restaurant overlooking Coppet Hall Beach, bringing together Hywel Griffith and Gerwyn Jones.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 90 minutes
- Locality
- directly overlooking Coppet Hall Beach
Walks & outdoors
1 placeThe Dramway Trail
This coast-path section follows the old tramway along an elevated seawall and through tunnels once used by a narrow-gauge railway.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 2 hours
- Locality
- from Saundersfoot beach car park to Wiseman's Bridge
- Access
- Buggy-friendly and accessible to all, with a smooth, slightly springy tunnel surface.
History & heritage
2 places
Saundersfoot Harbour
Built between 1829 and 1837 for coal export, the working harbour is now home to private moorings, pleasure boats and fishing charters.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 45 minutes
- Locality
- Saundersfoot Harbour
St Issell's Church
A Grade II* church with a thirteenth-century pointed chancel arch, medieval fabric and a distinctive limestone font carved with stars and crescents.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 45 minutes
- Locality
- a wooded dell north of the village
Things to do
1 placeSaundersfoot Sea Safari
Boat trips around Tenby, Caldey Island, St Margaret's and St Catherine's islands offer chances to spot seals, dolphins and nesting seabirds.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 2 hours
- Locality
- Saundersfoot Harbour
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Three ways to explore Saundersfoot
Signature outings
Coal beneath the pleasure boats
Watch pleasure boats and fishing charters in a harbour built between 1829 and 1837 to export anthracite.
The tramway tunnels
Follow the old tramway along the seawall and through the tunnels towards Wiseman's Bridge.
Stars and crescents in stone
Find the limestone font carved with scattered stars and crescents inside the Grade II* church.
The town story
Saundersfoot Town Guide
Welsh cakes by the water, seafood around the harbour, tramway tunnels, coal history and a church older than the port.
Welsh cakes and a coal-built harbour
MamGu Welshcakes sits at the far end of Saundersfoot Harbour, in a room where the sea view runs from Monkstone Point round to Pendine. Becky and Thea started the business in 2016 as a single gazebo with a small griddle at a Christmas market, and got the recipe right, by their own reckoning, some 700 Welsh cakes later. It is now a Certified B Corporation with a second café up at St Davids, but the Saundersfoot branch is still a beachside counter where you can order a Chilli Chocolate Welsh cake, or a Cheese & Leek one, or a full Welsh fry-up that arrives with a cheese-and-leek Welsh cake sitting on the plate alongside the bacon. Dogs are welcome. It is a good place to start, because it faces the thing the whole village is arranged around.
Saundersfoot is a seaside village on Carmarthen Bay, inside the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, three miles up the coast from Tenby. The population is about 2,500, and nearly forty per cent of them are over sixty-five, which is well above the county average and tells you something about the pace. In front of the village is a golden Blue Flag beach; behind it the streets climb away from the water. To the east the sand runs on to Coppet Hall and Glen Beach and carries round to Monkstone Point, backed by cliffs and woodland the whole way. In 2026 Time Out put Saundersfoot at number one in its guide to Britain's best seaside towns, ahead of a good many larger and better-known places, and called it "one of Pembrokeshire's most energetic spots." A man who runs the @aroundtenby account on Threads put it better: "Coppet Hall, Saundersfoot, Glen Beach, all the way round to Monkstone Point. Beaches lined up like biscuits in a tin, each one as tasty as the next."
The harbour itself was not built for pleasure. It was built for coal, and it is worth holding that in mind while you watch the pleasure boats swing on their moorings, because it explains the shape of the place. More on that later; the harbour now does sea safaris, fishing charters and private moorings, and lining the water are the pubs and the restaurants.
Pubs, fish and beachside cooking
The Royal Oak, on Wogan Terrace, has been pouring drinks since 1837 and bills itself as one of Pembrokeshire's oldest surviving watering holes. New management took it over in 2021 and rebranded it as a modern British pub, but it still keeps six real ales on tap and holds Cask Marque accreditation, which is more than most seaside pubs bother with. The kitchen does modern British food with a Mediterranean lean, homemade pies and an amount of seafood, and on Wednesdays there is a steak night — dry-aged sirloin or ribeye with sides and a free pint or a glass of wine, for £22.50.
Down on the harbour, the Captain's Table has a story attached. The building was turned into a seafood restaurant in 1963 by a man called Valentine Howells, who came over from Port Talbot to do it. It now has a large beer garden used for music, an elevated platform for watching the sun go down, and a row of colourful beach huts for when the wind gets up. The pizzas, curries and lasagne are made in-house, and the Sunday lunch is the thing people book for. A few doors along is HARBWR Bar & Kitchen, tied to Tenby Harbour Brewery, which serves its own ales named after well-known Tenby boats — Caldey Lollipop, North Star, RFA Sir Galahad — alongside grills, loaded jackets and locally caught fish.
For fish done seriously, there are two options and they could not be more different. The Stone Crab is a small restaurant on the harbour where booking is essential, run by an owner and head chef called Mark; it does fresh local fish and shellfish and lets dogs sit at the outside tables. At Coppet Hall Beach is Lan y Môr, which means "by the sea" in Welsh. Until June 2024 this was Coast, a tasting-menu restaurant with three AA Rosettes and a head chef, Fred Clapperton, who had won a Michelin star at twenty-nine. It relaunched as something more relaxed under Hywel Griffith, who holds a star at the Beach House on Gower, with Gerwyn Jones running the kitchen after six years at the Grove of Narberth. The Good Food Guide calls it a "born-again beachside eatery with Welsh credentials." The menu has Frockles — battered cockles with smoky sea salt and mayo — seared Saundersfoot mackerel with pickled fennel and orange, hot-honey chicken bao buns, and, when it is going, Saundersfoot lobster with tandoori butter.
Beyond fish and onto the coast path
Not everything is fish. Kookaba is an Australian steakhouse and has been for about twenty-five years, run by John, who was the long-term chef before he owned it. The menu offers charcoal-grilled Kookaba Steaks, Bonzer Burgers, kangaroo, barramundi, and, if diners are to be believed, zebra. The Mulberry, near the harbour, is a family-run place that puts an Indian twist on classic French cooking. The Boathouse, on Cambrian Place, is the family-friendly one for grills and local fish; it used to be the Cambrian Hotel, and the name change is the sort you notice once and then can't unsee.
The dog owners are well served beyond the beach. Periwinkle Bistro is a daytime tearoom that turns into a Mediterranean and Moroccan tapas place with live music on Friday and Saturday nights; the owner, Kim, is known for handing free snacks to nervous dogs. Sip N Sea, on Cambrian Terrace, does a home-cooked all-day breakfast and opened in the space next to the Snug pub, which shut on New Year's Day 2025. Sue's Pantry bakes its cupcakes in front of you and claims the biggest scones in the village. Bakers on the Strand handles the bread, vegan and gluten-free included. Four Seasons, a farm shop and florist out toward Tenby on the Narberth Road, is owned by Hugh Scale and stocks local meat, veg, cheese and eggs; his daughter Lois runs the flowers, inspired, she says, by her grandmother. For ice cream there is the Hive on Beddoes Court, whose honey ice cream is made in Aberaeron and made The Times' top forty parlours in 2025, and a Sidoli's kiosk by the harbour, which is a name that has been selling Welsh-Italian ice cream for generations.
The walking starts at the beach car park. The Dramway runs north along the old coal-tramway seawall to Wiseman's Bridge, a flat, buggy-friendly route of a little over three miles that passes through a series of tunnels cut into the cliffs. The tunnels once carried a narrow-gauge railway, and in 2021 they were resurfaced with shredded reclaimed tyre rubber, which makes them slightly springy underfoot; children treat the dark stretches as the main event. It is the busiest right of way in Pembrokeshire — more than 481,000 people walked it in 2021. South of the village the going gets harder. The coast path climbs from the Glen through Rhode Wood and Swallow Tree Woods toward Monkstone Point, an unusually wooded stretch of an otherwise open coast, with fulmars and cormorants on the cliffs and the occasional otter below. On to Tenby it is roughly eight miles and takes the best part of a day.
Beaches, winter swimmers and coal
The beaches divide by temperament. The main one sits in front of the village. Coppet Hall keeps soft sand even at high tide and has toilets and family changing rooms. Glen Beach is the quieter one, dog-friendly, sandy, with rockpools under the cliffs. Good Trails at Coppet Hall hires wetsuits, paddleboards, kayaks and bikes and runs SUP safaris, and the sea safari boats go out around Tenby and Caldey Island to look for seals, dolphins and seabirds. There is crabbing off the harbour walls, a land train along the front, and a wood-fired sauna at the harbour for anyone who wants to earn a swim.
The swim, when it comes, is a matter of record. On New Year's Day, hundreds of people, many in fancy dress, run into the sea while a crowd cheers from the harbour. It started as a one-off on Boxing Day 1984, when a handful of locals went in for charity to raise money for changing rooms and the medical centre, moved to New Year's Day the following year, and stuck. The fortieth swim, in 2026, drew a record 3,323 registered swimmers — billed as the largest festive charity swim in the country — and the event has raised more than £800,000 over its life.
Which brings us back to the coal. Parliament approved the harbour in 1829, the railway and harbour were finished by 1834, and the port then spent a century shipping anthracite — around 30,000 tons a year at its peak — out past five jetties. Bonville's Court, the largest colliery in the Pembrokeshire coalfield, opened in 1842 and was developed by C.R. Vickerman, a London solicitor who owned Hean Castle up the hill; its near-smokeless anthracite was reputedly good enough to fuel Queen Victoria's royal yacht. The last pit closed in 1939 and the railway closed with it, and Coppet Hall, which the guidebooks now call a beach, was known in the nineteenth century as Coalpit Hall.
Flight, wartime rehearsals and St Issell's
Two other things happened here worth knowing. William Frost, a Saundersfoot carpenter born in 1848, patented a flying machine in 1894 and is said to have flown it about 500 metres near the village in 1896, before a storm that same night smashed the thing to pieces; nobody officially recorded the flight, so he died in 1935 without the credit. And in the summer of 1943, some 100,000 troops rehearsed the D-Day landings on the beaches here and at Wiseman's Bridge. Churchill is said to have watched from the wall of the Wiseman's Bridge Inn, drinking a cup of tea.
The village church, St Issell's, is older than any of it, set in a wooded dell to the north. It is Grade II*, keeps a thirteenth-century chancel arch and a medieval tower, and was heavily restored in the 1860s by a Hereford architect for £1,300. The font is a square bowl of oolitic limestone carved with stars and crescents that look scattered rather than arranged, standing on a pillar built from two reused medieval column caps. Vickerman is buried in the churchyard, along with the Stokes and Lewis families of Hean Castle, whose names turn up again in the stained glass.
On a fine morning at the harbour you will see anglers hauling crab lines up the wall, someone dragging a paddleboard down to the water, and, if the timing is right, the smell of a griddle coming off the end of the quay where two women who started with a gazebo are still turning out Welsh cakes.
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A guide with a point of view
Written from research. Edited for real journeys.
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Sources
Every place on this page is checked against a published source. Each entry links the record we used and names who publishes it.
- Saundersfoot Harbour — saundersfootharbour.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Saundersfoot Beach — visitpembrokeshire.com operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Coppet Hall Beach — visitpembrokeshire.com operator, sector body or destination organisation
- The Dramway Trail — pembrokeshire.gov.uk statutory register or public authority
- St Issell's Church — churchinwales.org.uk other published source
- Good Trails — good-trails.com operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Saundersfoot Sea Safari — saundersfootseasafari.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- The Royal Oak — theroyaloaksaundersfoot.com operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Lan y Môr — thegoodfoodguide.co.uk other published source