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More About Cottages and Self-Catering in Saundersfoot

Amroth is where the Pembrokeshire Coast Path ends, and the tide is worth watching there. At the lowest tides, after storms have stripped the sand, the beach uncovers the stumps of a forest the sea drowned thousands of years ago. Fossilised antlers, nuts and Neolithic flints have come out of it.

For the food side of a week there is a farm shop and delicatessen at Bethesda Cross on the A478, and a butcher and fishmonger at Kilgetty.

The beach at Amroth, at the far end of this stretch of coast, is not always a beach. Under the sand lies a forest that grew here when the sea was further out, and every so often the sea takes the sand away and gives the forest back.

Stumps stand up out of the flats, and the wood in them is soft and waterlogged. Nuts, acorns and paper-thin leaves have been found in the peat around them, along with fossilised antlers, animal bones and Neolithic flints. The same deposits surface at half a dozen other beaches in the county, so it is the edge of a whole lost landscape.

The cottages you can rent here have a more recent history, and a sociable one. Milford Terrace, a row of seven at the top of Milford Street, was put up around 1850 by the Saundersfoot Building Society on land leased from the Picton estate.

That was working people clubbing together to build their own houses. All seven are listed. Several still carry their given names: Pen-y-dre, Coppers, Tryweryn Cottage and Ynysfach.

Not everything was built to the same standard. The colliers’ cottages along what was then Railway Street were much smaller and opened straight onto the road. In 1859 the road was shifted eastwards to give them proper front gardens, though the matching terrace meant for the other side was never built.

Cambrian Terrace, from the later 1860s, was something else again. The conservation record calls it the only development in Saundersfoot of superior urban type, with basement kitchens and areas at the front.

Whether you get to see the forest is a matter of luck. It spends most of its life under sand, and it takes a very low tide, usually after winter storms, before much of it appears.

If you do catch it, look rather than collect, because the flints and bones are archaeology and belong where they are. The village around the harbour has been a conservation area since 1995, which is part of why the older streets still read as they do.

There are four pubs along the coast between the village and Amroth. The New Inn at Amroth is sixteenth-century and has been run by the same family since 1975, with a garden and a balcony above the bay.

The Wiseman’s Bridge Inn, on the beach, was recently refurbished and does food most of the week. The Amroth Arms is on the seafront, and the Temple Bar Inn sits a few steps off the coast path and takes dogs.

Colby Woodland Garden, the National Trust place inland from Amroth, is open daily from ten until five. What is worth seeing in it changes with the season: camellias, rhododendrons and azaleas early, wildflowers and the walled garden later.

Parking is seven pounds for the day or three pounds fifty for three hours, though members and Blue Badge holders park free. The tearoom keeps shorter hours in winter, so ring ahead out of season.

In the sea itself, the 2025 testing rated Saundersfoot and Coppet Hall Excellent and Amroth Good, the top two classifications there are. Amroth is lifeguarded daily from the middle of July to the first week of September, ten until six. The RNLI sets those dates fresh each spring, so check before you travel. No flags on the beach means no lifeguards on duty, whatever the calendar says.

For a visitor today, the coal and the lost forest are just good stories to walk off. A week in a cottage here is spent between the sand, the level tramway path and whichever of the four pubs turns out nearest. Most take dogs, and the beaches are best out of season, empty.