How to beach in… Pembrokeshire

If you have timed it right (tide well out), Marloes will delight you. It’s a very long, very varied beach; half a dozen beaches divided by cliffs and buttresses and thrusts of rock. It’s a library of geology poking out of Welsh gold sand. It’s choughs and peregrines flying along the cliffs overhead and the bright bath toy of the Pembroke to Rosslare ferry steaming across the glittering blue of the offing.

If I had one day of life to spend on one beach, it’s me, right there, swimming in the blasting white foam of the waves, rolled in the mighty Beryl-green breakers, body-surfing with my brother and our boys, in the sun and the shattering blue sky of a Welsh summer day – Marloes is forever.

Now, West Dale is different. This is more a local favourite than a tourist beach. Known as the Red Beach, for its glowing pink sandstone rocks, West Dale is a steep track down to a wild beach with big sand, great waves and big cliffs. It’s the wild-girl rock-pool star of beaches.

A real jewel, it is an easy walk from the village of Dale, which has the excellent Griffin – best seafood in Pembs – and parking. West-facing, sheltered, children recognise it as a wonderland and become entirely absorbed in exploring, rockpooling, sandcastling.

We always end up at Little Haven in the crook of St Bride’s Bay, a drive north of Marloes and Dale. At low tide this beach goes all the way to the end of Broad Haven, a couple of miles, and it’s the ideal family place: endless sand, barely shelving, and shallow water quite a way out.

Here we fool about in the starter-waves, overlooked by the village of Little Haven (head to the Swan for drinks, the Castle for top pub food, and the Saint Brides for posher food and wine).

There are pictures of me in my first ever boats, a small blow-up canoe, in a rock pool on Little Haven beach. I lived here one winter and wrote half a book in a beach cottage, next to the Swan. And you will feel that this is your place, too. The light, the colours and the skies of Pembrokeshire are eternal. You need only stand under them to know that something inside you has always belonged to this sea.

Don’t forget: Everything you need if you are going to Marloes Sands. It’s a way back up to the car and to the village, so pack for the whole day and lug it all down and back. The Marloes haul is a Pembrokeshire tradition.

Stay at: The Druidstone Hotel, or rent Beach Cottage, Little Haven.

• This article was corrected on 27 June 2025. An earlier version referenced the Swansea-Cork ferry. In fact it is the Pembroke to Rosslare ferry.