Benton Wood

DISTANCE/DURATION: 4.6 miles (7.4km) 1 hour 30minutes.
PUBLIC TRANSPORT: Service bus Burton 308
CHARACTER: Easy to moderate, 1.0mile(1.6km) quiet lanes, woodland tracks and minor road, fields and livestock, woodland, can be muddy in places
LOOK OUT FOR: Benton Castle (private residence), woodland birds, pastoral landscapes, deciduous and coniferous woods
CAUTION: Please leave farm gates clear at parking area.

Despite their ‘mountain’ ambitions neither Burton Mountain or its neighbour Williamston Mountain rises to more the 55 metres (180 feet).

Beyond Williamston Mountain Farm most of the route is through woodland, a mixture of broadleaf trees and conifers that runs along the eastern side of the Cleddau as far as Port Lion.

Look out for large flocks of blue tits and great tits searching the treetops for food on winter days. In summer the woods ring to the song of warblers like the wood warbler and the chiffchaff, which fly in from Africa to breed in the wooded valleys of Pembrokeshire.

The Daugleddau waterway has several castles that were built as strongholds but over the years became fortified residences – Benton Castle is one.

The castle is thought to have been built to defend the lordship of Rhos and may have been a home of the powerful De la Roche family. The remaining tower dates from the 13th century.

From the end of the Civil War in the 17th century the castle was a ruin, but in the 1930s it was refurbished and it is now a private home and not open to the public.