Pembrokeshire from Fishguard

Editor's note

Two nights at St Davids, Britain's smallest city. The cathedral was begun in 1181: look for the sloping nave, the Irish oak ceiling of 1530–40 and the Shrine of St David, re-dedicated in 2012, then walk the ruins of the Bishop's Palace beside it. Boats cross from St Justinian's to Ramsey Island, an RSPB reserve, between Easter and October. Walk the Pembrokeshire Coast Path from St Davids to Solva, and go to Abereiddy for the Blue Lagoon, a flooded slate quarry about 25m deep. Look for Ordovician graptolite fossils in the shale on the beach there.

Editor's note

One night at Marloes, for Skomer. The boat goes from Martin's Haven when the sea allows and lands at North Haven. The island holds around half the world's Manx shearwaters and the largest Atlantic puffin colony in southern Britain, and both breed here in late spring and summer. Walk the island circuit past the puffin burrows, find the Iron Age field banks and hut circles, and look for the Skomer vole, which lives nowhere else on earth.

Editor's note

One night between Pembroke and Stackpole. Margaret Beaufort gave birth to the future Henry VII at Pembroke Castle in 1457; climb the round keep, 23 metres tall under a domed stone roof, and find Wogan Cave beneath, where people lived at the end of the last ice age. On the coast, walk down to St Govan's Chapel, built into the cliff over the cave where the monk Govan is said to have lived, and count the steps both ways. It lies inside the Castlemartin military training area. Then walk the Bosherston lily ponds and Broad Haven South, and beyond them Barafundle Bay, which has no road.

Editor's note

One night by Tenby. Enter the walled town through the Five Arches barbican gate, tour the Tudor Merchant's House and see work by Augustus and Gwen John, both born in Tenby, at the museum. Boats cross from the harbour to Caldey Island, where the monks' abbey, completed in 1910, is the most complete Arts and Crafts building in the country, with a 6th-century ogham stone and a lighthouse of 1829. At Carew, walk the castle from Gerald de Windsor's keep to Perrot's Elizabethan range, then go into the tidal mill beside it, the only restored one in Wales.

Editor's note

One last night in north Pembrokeshire before the crossing home. Pentre Ifan, above Nevern, is the largest and best preserved Neolithic dolmen in Wales: a five-metre capstone, thought to weigh 16 tonnes, resting on the tips of three uprights since around 3500 BC. At Castell Henllys, go into the Iron Age roundhouses rebuilt on their original foundations. In Cardigan, visit the castle where Rhys ap Gruffydd held the first recorded eisteddfod in 1176, then follow the Teifi upstream to Cenarth for the falls, the bridge of 1787 and the National Coracle Centre.