Wales - Tenby/Calday Island - Barafundle Beach Day 3

Off after another filling breakfast at the B&B this morning.  This morning it was scrambled eggs with green onions and tomato, a traditional Venezuelan breakfast our host tells us.  A delicious start to the day, purchased some of her homemade Seville marmalade as well, yummy will enjoy when we get home.

So our hosts suggested we change our plans around a little and it turns out we had a fantastic day.  We started off by going to Tenby which is a beautiful seaside town only about a 1 hour drive from where we were staying.  We walked around town a little, nice small streets with lots of shops, pubs, and great views of the water set up on the cliffs.  Tides here are around 30 feet, so very close to Bay of Fundy, quite low tide when we are here today so lots of beautiful sand bars.  Fun to see the boats grounded like we see in Alma, only here there are so many more. 

Tenby

We decided to take a boat ride over and spend some time on Calday Island.  This is a Island that is inhabited by Monks, visitors are allowed for a few hours a day.  They make perfume and chocolate for sale, and I'm sure get a cut on the tourists boat fees that come over.  It is an extremely pretty Island, some very nice walks around the coast, and it is very quiet today so we absolutely loved it.  We missed out on the chocolate making as we left around 12:30, but we did manage to buy some at the little store/post office on the Island.  Oh, Andre also sweet talked the lady in the post office to let him charge up a battery for his camera as one has gone astray since we have been here, and his other one was nearly dead.  Crisis over as he was lucky enough to have the charger and adaptor in his camera bag....

Calday Island

Calday Island

I loved this guys curly locks

Boat ride back to Tenby

Tenby low tide, reminded us of Alma

Next off we have an hour drive to a spot that I had read about on the internet, that was also highly recommended by the Pembrokeshire national Park information center that we visited.  We drove to Stackpole Quay, parked there and then walked to Barafundle beach which is supposed to be rated one of the top 10 beaches in the UK.  The drive here was fantastic, very tiny single track roads which on either side of you have hedges covered in Spring flowers.  So few places to pull over if you meet anyone, so lucky not too much traffic.  Scotland was so much easier to drive, lots of pullouts there, here there are barely any.  I can not imagine what it is like here in the summer when it is much busier with tourists. 

So off we set out frojm Barafundle beach.  We were expecting a couple of miles walk which was fine.  Absolutely gorgeous vistas over the cliffs.  Even saw some young seagulls still in their nests, we have never seen nesting seagulls before.  Now a decision, do we walk back the same way we came, or take the short loop around and back to the car.  Decided it would be nice to go a different route back, but this did not turn out as expected.  Our little map led us a little off course, and we ended up doing the long route of 5 miles.  I am up to 25000 steps today on my phone, so it was long.  Good thing we had brought along a brown bag lunch to eat on the beach or I would have been extremely grumpy :)  But of course we survived, and I'll sleep very well tonight.

Barafundle beach

Barafundle beach

Nesting Seagull

Baby swans!

Found our B&B for the next 2 nights with no problem.  Have been to town for supper and back  to get organized for our day photography trip to Skomer Island. 

The photographer has sent us a list of things for how to set up our cameras in advance, my cell phone doesn't have any of these options I don't think.  This could be a very long day for me if I am with a bunch of real photographer geeks, but I have my binoculars and my cell so I am good to go.