Bluebell Season at Colby and Minwear

Bluebells are a fixed point in the Pembrokeshire calendar. They come in late April, peak for a fortnight and are gone by the end of May, and there is no rescheduling them.

Colby Woodland Garden sits in a sheltered valley behind Amroth and is the easiest place to see them well — a National Trust garden of woodland paths, a stream and a walled garden, with the bluebells running up both sides of the valley. It is buggy- and toddler-friendly, which most bluebell woods are not, and there is a cafe.

Minwear Wood, on the Eastern Cleddau near Blackpool Mill, is the wilder version: forestry tracks through old oak woodland above the river, free, usually quiet, and good for an hour or three. The Lawrenny and Cresswell Quay lanes nearby run through more of the same.

The odd one. Skomer's bluebells grow in the open with no trees at all, because the island has no grazing deer and no trees to speak of. Cliff-top bluebells alongside sea campion and thrift, with puffins in the middle of them, is a peculiarly Pembrokeshire sight, and it happens in the same fortnight.

The honest bit. Timing is the whole problem. A cold March pushes the peak into May, a warm one pulls it forward, and the difference between the best week and the week after is stark. Check recent photographs before travelling a long way. And stay on the paths — bluebells take years to recover from being trodden on, and a flattened patch is somebody's afternoon photograph for the next decade.