Lydstep/Penally

DISTANCE/DURATION: 6.4 miles (10.3km) 3 hours 30 minutes.
PUBLIC TRANSPORT: Service bus Lydstep village 349/360, holiday park, Service bus Penally 349/360.
CHARACTER: Cliff edge, moderate grade, fields and livestock, 2.2 miles (3.5 km) minor road walking, 100m (110yds) main trunk road walking.
CAUTION: 2 crossing points at main trunk road and active railway line crossing.
LOOK OUT FOR: Cliff caves, coastal views, river valley, limestone cliffs, pretty village of Penally, inland views and views of Caldey Island.

Penally’s history goes back to the Stone Age, when Pembrokeshire’s earliest settlers were the hunter-gatherers who lived at Hoyle’s Mouth cave, just above The Ritec and not far from the route. The cave is thought to have been occupied around 25,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age.

Used as a shelter for many thousands of years, the cave has offered up all sorts of artefacts of its hunter-gatherer occupants, including flint blades and scrapers and the bones of mammoth, hyena, bear and reindeer. Some of the finds can be seen at Tenby Museum.

At Lydstep Pembrokeshire’s broad band of Carboniferous Limestone meets the sea, creating some the county’s finest cliffscapes. Smugglers once stored their contraband in one of the many caves in the area and limestone rock used to be quarried from Lydstep Point.

Tim Jones, ex-South Sector Ranger for Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority, says: “Parts of this route follow a very long established path. Until the quarry at Lydstep closed in the latter part of the 19th century the quarrymen used to walk this way to and from their work.”