West Angle Bay

West Angle sits at the very tip of the south Pembrokeshire peninsula, looking across the entrance of the Milford Haven waterway to St Ann's Head, with Thorn Island and its Victorian fort a few hundred metres offshore. There's a car park behind the beach, toilets, and a long-established café — a rare combination of easy access and genuine quality on this coast.

At low tide the bay opens into a wide sandy beach with an exceptional rockpool platform on the northern side. If you have children and a net, plan the whole day around the bottom of a spring tide: the pools here hold anemones, blennies, prawns and crabs in numbers you won't find at the busier resort beaches. Swimming is fine on a calm day and the bay is reasonably sheltered, but it's unguarded and there's serious commercial shipping traffic in the waterway just outside the headlands, so keep well inside the bay.

There's plenty to bolt on. Chapel Bay Fort, a restored Victorian gun battery with a small museum, sits on the headland nearby; the Coast Path north climbs to the old lookout and the wartime remains on the headland, and south rounds towards Freshwater West. Angle village and its pub are five minutes away, and the sheltered east-facing Angle Bay on the other side of the peninsula is a good bird-watching stop on a rough day. Tankers passing a few hundred metres offshore are part of the view here — some people love it, some don't.