Dale Beach

Dale's beach fronts the village along Dale Roads, a deep sheltered anchorage inside the Milford Haven waterway. It's shingle at the top with sand appearing as the tide drops, and it is not a beach for long sandy walks — it's a beach for getting on the water. Dale is the county's watersports village, with a sailing club, activity centre, boat moorings filling the bay, and hire and instruction available in season. Kayaking, dinghy sailing, windsurfing and paddleboarding all happen here on water that's usually flat when the open coast is unusable.

That shelter is the whole point. When the westerlies are hammering Marloes and Whitesands, Dale is often calm enough to teach children to sail. The flipside is tidal current: streams run hard through the waterway and around St Ann's Head, so stay inside the bay unless you know what you're doing. There's parking along the front, toilets, a café and a pub a few steps from the water.

Walking from here is excellent. The Dale peninsula circuit — out past the castle to St Ann's Head lighthouse, round to Mill Bay where Henry Tudor landed in 1485, and back over Westdale Bay — is about seven miles of first-rate Coast Path and can be shortened to a fifteen-minute crossing to Westdale if you just want the surf side. Watch the working shipping in the waterway; it's part of the character of the place.