Climb the great round keep and look up into its domed roof

Find Wogan Cave beneath the castle, where people lived at the end of the ice age

Find out why Margaret Beaufort was at Pembroke when Henry VII was born in 1457

Find out how Cromwell took the castle in 1648

In 1457 Margaret Beaufort, brought to Pembroke by her brother-in-law Jasper Tudor, gave birth here to her only child, who became Henry VII. Richard I gave the castle to William Marshal, one of the most powerful men of 12th-century Britain, and the huge round keep of the inner ward is 23 metres tall with walls up to six metres thick at the base and a domed stone roof. Under the castle, Wogan Cave shows people were here at the end of the last ice age. In 1648 the castle rose for the king, and Cromwell himself came and took it after a seven-week siege.

Pembroke Castle: Where Henry VII Was Born

Pembroke and Stackpole

Fishguard

Six nights in a loop from Fishguard round Pembrokeshire: St Davids and the Blue Lagoon, puffins on Skomer, St Govan's Chapel and Tenby's walls, then Pentre Ifan and the Teifi coracles.

Pembrokeshire from Fishguard

Tenby

Nine nights on the Pembrokeshire coast from Tenby to Cardigan: Caldey's monks and St Govan's cliff chapel, Skomer's puffins and shearwaters, the coast path from St Davids to Solva, and the Neolithic dolmen at Pentre Ifan.

Pembrokeshire: Tenby to St Davids and the Teifi

Walk round the castle from Gerald de Windsor's keep to Perrot's Elizabethan range

Go into the Carew Tidal Mill, the only restored tidal mill in Wales

Carew Castle stands on a limestone bluff over the Carew inlet of the Milford Haven waterway. Gerald de Windsor built its first stone keep around 1100, on the manor that came to him with his wife, Nest, princess of Deheubarth. Rhys ap Thomas, who made his fortune by changing sides to back Henry VII just before Bosworth, held it later, and Sir John Perrot, Lord Deputy of Ireland, who acquired it in 1558, rebuilt the north walls as a long Elizabethan range of rooms — before falling from favour and dying in the Tower in 1592. Beside the castle is Carew Tidal Mill, the only restored tidal mill in Wales.

Carew: A Castle, a Tidal Mill and a Welsh Princess

Walk down the steps to St Govan's Chapel and count them both ways

Find out about Govan, the monk who lived in a cave on this spot

Walk the Bosherston lily ponds and Broad Haven South beach

Walk to Barafundle Bay, which has no road

St Govan's Chapel is built into a limestone cliff at St Govan's Head, most of it in the 13th century, over the cave where the monk Govan is said to have lived in the 6th century — and, by one legend, is buried under the altar. You reach it down 52 steps, though the story goes that you never count the same number going down as coming up. It lies inside the Castlemartin military training area. Along the coast from Bosherston are the lily ponds and Broad Haven South, and beyond them Barafundle Bay, part of the National Trust's Stackpole Estate, with no road to it at all.

St Govan's Chapel and Stackpole: The Chapel in the Cliff

Walk Tenby's 13th-century town walls and through the Five Arches barbican gatehouse

Tour the Tudor Merchant's House, the National Trust's late medieval town house

Visit Tenby Museum and Art Gallery, with work by Augustus John, born in Tenby, and his sister Gwen John, who grew up here

Take a boat from Tenby to Caldey Island to see its monastery, completed in 1910 and considered the most complete Arts and Crafts building in the country, the 6th-century ogham stone and the lighthouse of 1829

Tenby still has much of its 13th-century town walls, entered through the Five Arches barbican gate. In the old town are the Tudor Merchant's House, a late medieval house kept by the National Trust, and Tenby Museum, with work by Augustus John, born in Tenby, and his sister Gwen John, who grew up here. From the harbour, boats cross to Caldey Island, where the monks' abbey, completed in 1910, is considered the most complete Arts and Crafts building in the country, with a 6th-century ogham stone and a lighthouse of 1829.

Tenby and Caldey: The Walled Town and the Monks' Island

Take the boat from Martin's Haven and land at North Haven

Walk the island circuit past the puffin burrows

Find the Iron Age field banks and hut circles

Look for the Skomer vole, found nowhere else on earth

Skomer, off the Pembrokeshire coast, holds around half the world's population of Manx shearwaters, the largest Atlantic puffin colony in southern Britain, and the Skomer vole, which is found nowhere else. The boat goes from Martin's Haven when the sea allows, and much of the island is a scheduled ancient monument of Iron Age fields and hut circles. The shearwaters come and go from their burrows only at night, so day visitors see the burrows rather than the birds; the puffins are gone by the end of July.

Skomer: Half the World's Manx Shearwaters

Visit St Davids Cathedral in Britain's smallest city by population, its present building begun in 1181, and see its sloping nave, the Irish oak ceiling of 1530–1540 and the restored Shrine of St David re-dedicated in 2012

Explore the ruins of the Bishop's Palace beside the cathedral

Take a boat trip from St Justinian's lifeboat station to Ramsey Island, the RSPB reserve where more than 400 grey seal pups are born each autumn, sailing from Easter to October

St Davids is Britain's smallest city by population. Its cathedral was begun in 1181: the nave slopes, the ceiling is Irish oak from 1530–40, and the Shrine of St David was restored and re-dedicated in 2012. Beside it are the ruins of the Bishop's Palace. From St Justinian's, boats cross to Ramsey Island between Easter and October; it is an RSPB reserve, and more than 400 grey seal pups are born on its beaches each autumn.

St Davids: Britain's Smallest City by Population, and Ramsey Island

Visit the Boathouse where Thomas lived and worked

Look into the writing shed on the cliff path

Find Thomas's grave in St Martin's churchyard

Dylan Thomas lived at Laugharne from 1949 until his death in 1953 and called it a 'timeless, mild, beguiling island of a town'; it is generally taken as the model for Llareggub in Under Milk Wood. The Boathouse above the estuary is now a museum, with his writing shed on the cliff path beside it, and the castle stands over the water, with the garden gazebo beside it where Thomas also wrote.

Laugharne: Dylan Thomas's Boathouse and Llareggub

Stand under the capstone of Pentre Ifan, balanced on three stone tips

Find the portal stones and the stone that seems to block the entrance

Go into the rebuilt roundhouses at Castell Henllys

Find out how the roundhouses were rebuilt on their original Iron Age foundations

Pentre Ifan, above Nevern in north Pembrokeshire, is the largest and best preserved Neolithic dolmen in Wales. Its capstone, five metres long, is thought to weigh 16 tonnes and rests on the tips of three uprights two and a half metres off the ground; it was raised around 3500 BC, traditionally as a communal burial. A few kilometres away, Castell Henllys is an Iron Age hillfort where four roundhouses and a granary have been rebuilt on their original foundations, some 2,000 years old — the only place in Britain where that has been done.

Pentre Ifan and Castell Henllys: Stone Age and Iron Age

Walk out along the cliff top to Handfast Point and look down on Old Harry

Work out how the chalk once reached the Isle of Wight

Walk Knoll Beach and the dunes of Studland Bay

At Handfast Point on the Isle of Purbeck, three chalk formations, among them a stack and a stump, mark the eastern end of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site. The chalk used to run in one ridge across to the Isle of Wight; the sea broke through, arches formed and collapsed, and one of the stacks left behind is Old Harry; another, Old Harry's Wife, was worn through at the base until its top fell away, leaving a stump. North of the point, Studland Bay curves for two and a half miles of sandy beaches — South, Middle and Knoll Beach, and Shell Bay — backed by dunes and heathland, with a stretch set aside as a naturist beach.