Coast Path Wildflower Season

Ask anyone who walks this coast regularly which month they would keep, and most of them say May. The weather is often better than August, the paths are dry, the crowds have not arrived and the clifftops are in full flower.

What you are looking at. Thrift — sea pink — in cushions along the very edge, sea campion in white drifts beside it, spring squill in pale blue patches on the short turf, kidney vetch and birds-foot trefoil in yellow, and bluebells growing in the open where there is no grazing. On the western headlands the whole edge is coloured for weeks.

Where it is best. The Marloes peninsula and Deer Park; St Davids Head from Whitesands; the Strumble Head coast; and the limestone at Stackpole, which flowers differently again because of the lime.

What else is happening at the same time. Choughs are feeding young on the western cliffs and are unmistakable — red bill, red legs, a call like a squeaky gate. Seabirds are packed onto the ledges. Puffins are ashore on Skomer. May is when everything overlaps.

The honest bit. The flowers grow on the crumbling, undercut edge, which is exactly where you should not go for a photograph. Every year somebody backs off the top of a cliff on this coast. Keep the dog on a lead — clifftop paths run through sheep and ground-nesting birds — and stay on the worn line of the path.