New life buzzes from all directions: why Pembrokeshire in spring is a nature-lover’s dream

05.03.2024 - 08:17 / theguardian.com

Edward Thomas’s In Pursuit of Spring, published more than a century ago, is a classic in the nature lover’s library, a lyrical account of the poet’s journey from London to Somerset seeking signs of the coming season. Setting out from a rainy Wandsworth in March 1913, shaking loose a long winter, Thomas yearned for apple blossom and cuckoo flowers, “the perfume of sunny earth”, and the nightingale’s song. “Would the bees be heard instead of the wind?” he questioned anxiously.

This was a relatable pursuit – come March we are all leaning towards the sun – yet rarely might we think of spring as a “place”. For Thomas, it was the rural south-west; for me, the returning spring is best embodied by Pembrokeshire.

Though raised a suburban Londoner, like Thomas, I have visited Pembrokeshire probably every year of my life. My mother was born in St Davids, Wales’s most westerly town (or, technically, city), where my grandfather was a member of the cathedral clergy. The family later moved eastwards to Carmarthenshire, but the coastal county remained a regular bolthole throughout my childhood: memories of Whitesands and Caerfai beaches, and of tracing the headland paths and butterfly-fluttered hedgerows are redolent with the smell of warmed bracken and haw blossom.

And as my fondness for the natural world solidified through adulthood – as a gardener, and a landscape and travel writer – Pembrokeshire’s appeal only heightened. Its multitude of wild flowers, treasured birdlife and diverse topography continually draw me back, best of all in the months of spring as new life buzzes from all directions. Long weekend dashes from London, family camping trips, solo stays on its haven islands: if ever I long for vernal brightness, it is always this coastline that beckons.

For those whose affections for scenic Cornwall have impeded familiarisation with Wales’s own stretch of pristine beaches and seaward sweeps, I’ll briefly make the case. This still predominantly rural, agricultural county is peppered with Norman castles, Benedictine monasteries, prehistoric ruins, even a Viking shipwreck – and more than a third of it, about 237 sq miles, form the remarkable and rugged Pembrokeshire Coast national park. It may be one of the smaller UK national parks, pipping neither the Cairngorms’ drama nor Dartmoor’s granite-sparkled wilderness, but it is one of the most – if not the most – environmentally varied.

Between the villages of Amroth in the south and St Dogmaels up by the Ceredigion border, the park charts an impressive geology, with the 186-mile Coast Path national trail taking in narrow headlands, limestone arches, isolated stacks and misty islands, stunning bays, beaches, lagoons and coves. For good reason, National Geographic