Tag Archives: St Davids

Sins on Site and Off

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St David’s cathedral in Pembrokeshire, Wales is a magnificent building and well worth a look, outside and in.

After our visit we climb the steps back up to the village and get an early evening beer before exploring evening dining possibilities, opting for The Bishops, which looks to have a good menu and a quirky interior.

On our return to the camp site we’re greeted with a message attached to our mirror. Apparently we’ve transgressed by parking the wrong way round and we’ve encroached on the next door pitch, as well as committing the grave misdemeanour of having our awning out! Who knew? It’s a wonder we’re not banished or the van impounded for such heinous sins!

We’re rarely subjected to strict rules and regulations when touring- I can only recall once having to park facing the same way as everyone else somewhere in Italy, a town site where it was all hard standing and terraced; but never before in a vast, rural site with oodles of space. The admonishment does nothing to endear the owners/managers of this place to us!

The meal at The Bishops is good, the venue characterful and just busy enough to be interesting. We return to site- up through the village and down the lane.

We’re off again next day to begin our return. Husband has found a site en route. We could have made our return in a day, although it would have been a long day’s travel. The site is outside Bath next to a busy road and half a mile along from a few houses and one large pub. There’s an unexpected shower of rain as we attempt to drive through Bath, clearly a mistake as we get into a muddle and [weeks later] end up with a fine for emissions, something we’d not considered! More sinning!

When we pull up, the iron gates across the site are closed. I ring the site’s number. Apparently we were supposed to look at an email which contained the access code- on a pad next to the gate. Failed again! The manager drives along in a 4×4 tom let us in. It’s an unusual site, highly un-manicured, with huge fields either side of a rough track. I assume it’s a work in progress, as the showers and toilets are in portacabins. There’s no electricity. All of this is fine for us for one overnight stop.

The site isn’t busy but there are a number of tents, some tiny- a group of singles with small cars and a pair of Dutch walkers. This is clearly a site much used for visiting Bath.

We wander up along the busy road to the pub- which is a big, cavernous place hosting a few diners. The fields flanking the road are dusty, beige prairies, bearing the mark of repeated heatwaves and drought that the UK has suffered this year, but there remains a wonderful crop of blackberries in the hedgerow, so brambles must be exceptionally resilient plants.

Then it’s home again and a start to planning the next getaway…

Novels by Jane Deans [Grace]: The Year of Familiar Strangers and The Conways at Earthsend. Visit my website: janedeans.com

A Lane of no Memory

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Having looked at Porth Cawl and had a very acceptable meal in the Rose and Crown pub in Nottage, it’s time to leave and move on to the next site.

We’re booked into a site at St Davids, in Pembrokeshire. I’ve been here before, many years ago and subsequently learn that I’ve been here twice, apparently having been on a camping trip with my youth club. I remembered we’d had a camping trip but forgotten the location. What I do recall is that I was on my own with a load of lads. Heaven knows how I was allowed to go by my parents!

The site is down an extremely narrow lane some little way out of town and down a steepish hill. At least the return from St Davids town will be downhill! It’s a huge site with several fields, of which ours is some distance from the gate and also the shower block.

We park up and chock up, as it’s a slope and we make sure we have a good view of the coastline from the van- and it is a spectacular view- rocky cliffs, coves and caves, dashed by foamy waves. We set up and decide on a walk [up the hill] into St Davids. It’s narrow enough that we must press ourselves into the hedgerow whenever a vehicle comes, and there are plenty of them as ours is not the only site down this lane.

I don’t remember much about St Davids, so the fact that I’ve been twice before isn’t an issue. But I do remember the amazing cathedral.

Is it a village or a town? It’s hard to say but it has just one main street, although it’s packed with a lot of well known retailers like Fatface and Go Outdoors, plus ice cream parlours, gift shops and a kind of antiques emporium in a grand building. Of course, none of these retailers was here for either of my previous trips, or even existed, I imagine. Perhaps it is one benefit of older age that poor memory blurs past events and travel? I may as well not have been here at all!

The ice cream parlour is very busy but has only one, unappealing vegan ice cream flavour, so I pass.

Further down the street there’s a small craft market on the island in the centre and further still, through an archway, there is the cathedral. It’s a glorious sight- vast and beautiful, nestling in the dip between the hills. But it’s still a long way down to the entrance, a choice of slope or steps.

There’s a stream at the bottom and we cross the bridge between the ruins of what used to be the bishop’s palace and the great cathedral. Here is a great setting for such iconic buildings, although when we take a look at the exterior of the bishop’s palace we decide not to pay to go inside, since there’s little left to see!

To the cathedral, then; we return to the main entrance and through the porch. And we’re not disappointed…

Novels by Jane Deans [Grace]: The Year of Familiar Strangers and The Conways at Earthsend. Visit my website: janedeans.com