Surfing in Pembrokeshire

Pembrokeshire faces the Atlantic on three sides, which means that on any given day something is usually working. The trade-off is that the beaches with the best waves are also the ones with the worst currents, and the gap between those two facts is where visitors get into trouble.

Freshwater West is the county's serious wave. A big, west-facing beach that takes swell straight off the Atlantic, it produces powerful, fast surf and correspondingly powerful rips. It has no year-round lifeguard cover and no shop, café or reliable phone signal. It is a beach for experienced surfers, and the reason it looks quiet on a good day is not that nobody has heard of it. Newgale is the other big one — over a mile of sand and shingle in St Brides Bay, exposed, consistent, and the place most local surfers actually go. It also has rips, a brutal high-tide shorebreak against the storm bank, and only seasonal cover.

Whitesands near St Davids is where you learn. It is a wide, sandy, west-facing beach with RNLI lifeguards through the main season, a car park, and surf schools operating from it. The waves are usually a size or two smaller than Freshwater West on the same day, which is exactly what you want. Broad Haven is the friendliest option in St Brides Bay when Newgale is too big, and Manorbier on the south coast picks up a short, punchy wave with a castle behind it.

A first lesson runs about two hours: half an hour of dry-land briefing that feels like a waste of time and isn't, then the rest in waist-deep white water on a soft-top board. Most people stand up in the first session. Almost nobody surfs an actual wave face in the first session, and it is worth knowing that in advance so you enjoy the day you are having.

The best surf is not in August. Summer here is often flat, small and crowded with swimmers; the swell arrives with the autumn depressions from September onwards and keeps coming through the winter. September and October are the sweet spot — decent waves, water at its warmest, and the beaches empty again. Winter surfing is entirely possible with 5mm rubber, boots, gloves and a hood, and there will be people out.

What catches people out: the wind. A clean 4ft swell turns into unsurfable mush in an onshore blow, and Pembrokeshire gets a lot of wind. Check a forecast that shows swell direction and wind separately, not just wave height. The second thing is the tide — several of these beaches are much better in the bottom half of the tide, and Newgale in particular is a different beach at high water. Ask in the surf shop; they will tell you honestly, because a drowned tourist is nobody's idea of a good season.

If you are walking rather than surfing, the Coast Path between Solva and Newgale gives you the best view of whether it is worth getting the board out.