Stackpole

The Inn and the Quay

The Stackpole Inn sits in gardens at the middle of the village, a 17th-century country inn that Gary and Becky have run for around eighteen years. The menu leans on whatever the Welsh boats bring in — a specials board that changes weekly, catch of the day, halibut with samphire — alongside beer-battered cod, a ribeye and mushroom pie, and a mushroom bourguignon pie for people who don't eat the fish. Sunday roast runs from noon to three. Reviewers call the prices a little above average but well worth it, which is the kind of phrase that usually means the food is good. It was voted Best Food Pub in Wales in 2005 and again in 2006. Dogs are welcome in the bar and garden, though not in the four B&B rooms upstairs.

That's most of the commerce. Stackpole is a small estate village, and the only other place to buy a cup of tea is the National Trust café and shop down at Stackpole Quay, where the coast path walkers stop.

On Foot to Bays and Ponds

The walking is the reason most people come. From the quay car park a flight of steps and a clifftop path lead to Barafundle Bay, which has no road access of any kind — you arrive on foot or not at all. The Good Holiday Guide once called it "the best beach in Britain," and Country Life named it the best place in the UK for a picnic. There are no facilities, so bring your own supplies. Beyond it the path carries on to Broad Haven South, where a limestone monolith called Church Rock stands offshore, then turns inland around the Bosherston Lily Ponds — a hundred acres of man-made lake with otters and dragonflies, level enough to push a buggy round. The full circuit back through the estate is about five miles.

The ponds themselves were made on purpose, by damming three narrow limestone valleys in 1780 and 1860, to give a landscaped view to a house that is no longer there.

The Estate Without Its House

Stackpole Court was built in 1735, enlarged in the 1840s, and demolished in April 1963 by the 5th Earl Cawdor after he was refused permission to make it smaller and the taxes on an empty mansion finished the job. The village you walk through was itself moved from its original medieval site in 1735 to clear room for the parkland. In 1967 nearly two thousand acres — the parkland, eight miles of coast, the beaches and the Lily Ponds — went to the National Trust. The terraces, the walled gardens and the Eight Arch Bridge survive as ruins.

A Medieval Church and Its Elidyr

The church, Ss James and St Elidyr, is Grade I listed and probably 12th century, with a notably slender tower and a cross-legged effigy of a knight said to be Sir Elidur de Stackpole. St Elidyr may not have been a saint at all; the name likely honours the Norman who founded the place, promoted to patron by long habit.

Reaching Stackpole

The nearest trains are at Lamphey and Pembroke, three or four miles north, and the 387/388 Coastal Cruiser bus loops through. The lanes are narrow enough that coaches get sent elsewhere, which suits the village fine.