Pembrokeshire sticks out into the Atlantic further west than almost anywhere in Wales, and it takes the weather first. Any week here should be planned on the assumption of rain, and the county’s advantage is that the weather moves through fast — a wet morning very often becomes a clear afternoon, and the light after a squall on this coast is worth the squall.
What Pembrokeshire does not have is a large town with a lot of indoor entertainment. Haverfordwest is the county town and it is modest. So the wet-weather plan here is castles, a small number of very good museums, one large family attraction, and the local habit of going into the sea anyway.
North of Saundersfoot. Its vintage indoor funfair — a covered hall of restored fairground rides, included in the admission — is the single best wet-weather asset in the county, and it is backed by indoor play barns and the zoo’s animal houses. Around half a million people a year go, and a disproportionate number of them go on wet days.
Pembrokeshire’s castles are mostly roofless, but the good ones have enough tower and passage to shelter in.
Pembroke Castle has the great round keep with its stone dome, the gatehouse, wall passages and the Wogan Cavern beneath it — a large natural cave in the limestone. Between them that is a substantial amount of indoors, plus an exhibition.
Carew Castle has the Elizabethan ranges and the restored tidal mill, one of only four in Britain, which is entirely under cover and rather good.
Manorbier is compact and has covered sections.
Picton Castle, near Haverfordwest, is a lived-in house with guided tours of the interior and forty acres of woodland garden — the most genuinely indoor castle visit in the county.
St Davids Cathedral is the reason the smallest city in Britain exists. It sits in a hollow below the town so that it could not be seen from the sea by raiders, and it is a substantial and beautiful building — twelfth century in origin, with a painted ceiling, a shrine, and the ruined Bishop’s Palace beside it. An hour and a half indoors, and free to enter with a suggested donation.
Lamphey Bishop’s Palace near Pembroke is a smaller ruin of the same family.
Scolton Manor, near Haverfordwest, is the county museum: a Victorian house, a country park and a museum of Pembrokeshire life, including a locomotive.
The National Wool Museum at Dre-fach Felindre, just over the Carmarthenshire border, is in a working woollen mill with the machinery running. It is free, it is excellent, and almost no visitor to the coast ever goes.
Milford Haven Museum on the waterfront covers the whaling and fishing history of the port. Haverfordwest Town Museum and the Welsh Spitfire Museum fill in locally.
Castell Henllys, the reconstructed Iron Age village in the north, has roundhouses you go inside — an unusual sort of shelter, and a good one.
Pembrokeshire more or less invented coasteering — scrambling, swimming and jumping along the base of the cliffs in a wetsuit and helmet — and the operators around St Davids and the north coast run it in weather that would keep walkers indoors. The same applies to surfing at Newgale and Whitesands, sea kayaking in the sheltered bays, and the Blue Lagoon at Abereiddi, which is a flooded quarry used for coasteering and cliff diving.
Rain makes no difference to any of it. Wind does, which is a different calculation.
The Bosherston Lily Ponds are sheltered and wooded and the paths drain reasonably.
The Daugleddau estuary walks around Lawrenny and Landshipping are inland, wooded and quiet.
Picton Castle’s and Colby Woodland Garden’s grounds are both under trees.
Porthgain and the Blue Lagoon at Abereiddi are short enough to do in a squall, and the industrial ruins at Porthgain look better in weather.
The clifftops are exposed and the paths are slippery on the wet clay sections. And the firing ranges at Castlemartin and Manorbier close the coast path when in use, regardless of weather.
The weather moves fast. Look at the radar rather than the daily forecast.
Trains run from Haverfordwest, Milford Haven, Pembroke Dock, Tenby and Fishguard on the main line to Carmarthen, Swansea and Cardiff, which is the escape route if it has genuinely set in.
Seasonal closing. A number of Pembrokeshire attractions and boat operators close from November to March. Check before travelling out of season.
Drying. Most holiday cottages and hotels here expect wet gear. Ask about a drying room if you are walking.
The shape that works in the south: Pembroke Castle in the morning, which has enough tower, gatehouse and cavern to keep you dry for two hours; lunch in Pembroke or Narberth; then Carew Castle’s tidal mill or Picton Castle’s interior in the afternoon. Finish at Folly Farm’s indoor funfair if there are children, or the Grove at Narberth if there are not.
In the north: St Davids Cathedral for the morning, the Bishop’s Palace if the rain eases, lunch in the city, and Castell Henllys or the National Wool Museum in the afternoon.
An argument for staying. Pembrokeshire’s light after a front goes through is the reason painters and photographers come here — the cliffs go gold, the sea turns an improbable blue-green over the sand, and rainbows stand over the water for half an hour at a time.
The practical version of this is to keep boots and a coat by the door and be ready to move when it clears. The best hours of a Pembrokeshire week are frequently the ones immediately after the worst.
Winter Atlantic storms hit this coast hard and there are places built for watching them. Newgale, where the sea comes over the shingle bank and across the road. Freshwater West, which is enormous in a swell. Porthgain and Abereiddi, where the industrial ruins and the quarry take the weather.
Stand well back from cliff edges and never on a sea wall or a harbour arm in a big sea. Every winter someone forgets.
Pembrokeshire’s market towns are the answer when the weather has beaten the plan. Narberth is the best of them: a compact high street of delis, bookshops, galleries and an independent department store, with several good places to eat and everything within a few hundred metres. Haverfordwest has the practical shopping and the castle above it. Fishguard and Newport in the north both have enough in them for an hour.
St Davids, though tiny, has a cathedral, a gallery, a run of cafés and a bookshop, which for the smallest city in Britain is a reasonable wet-afternoon offering.
Folly Farm’s indoor funfair, Pembroke and Picton castles, St Davids Cathedral, and the National Wool Museum just over the county line.
Entry is free with a suggested donation; there are charges for some tours and for the Bishop’s Palace.
Yes — coasteering, surfing and kayaking all run in rain. Wind is what stops them.
It is exposed to the Atlantic, so it gets its share, but the county is milder and often sunnier than the Welsh mountains inland.
Folly Farm for families; Picton Castle or the National Wool Museum for adults.