Pembrokeshire's Castles: A Two-Day Route

Pembrokeshire has an extraordinary density of castles, and there's a specific reason: the Landsker line.

After the Normans took the south of the county in the early 12th century, they built a chain of castles across it to hold the boundary between the Anglo-Norman south — "Little England beyond Wales" — and Welsh Pembrokeshire to the north. Flemish settlers were planted below the line. The linguistic border it created survived for eight centuries; you can still hear it in the place names, English to the south, Welsh to the north, changing over a few miles.

Day one: the south

Pembroke Castle is the one to start with. It's enormous, largely intact, and the birthplace of Henry VII — the Welshman who ended the Wars of the Roses. The Great Keep is 75 feet high with walls nearly 20 feet thick at the base, and the Wogan Cavern beneath it is a natural limestone cave the castle was built on top of. Give it two hours.

Carew Castle, fifteen minutes east, is the atmospheric one: a fortress that was half-converted into an Elizabethan mansion and then abandoned, so you get arrow slits and mullioned windows in the same wall. The tidal mill next to it is the only restored one in Wales, and the Carew Cross in the car park is an 11th-century Celtic cross most people walk straight past.

Manorbier Castle finishes the day. Gerald of Wales was born here in 1146 and called it the pleasantest place in Wales, which was partisan of him but not wrong — it sits above a beach in a green valley, and it is still privately owned, which gives it a lived-in oddness the state-run ones lack.

Day two: north across the line

Picton Castle near Haverfordwest is the outlier — continuously lived in since the 13th century, so the draw is the gardens and the woodland rather than ruins.

Cilgerran Castle on the Teifi gorge is the one to finish on. Two huge drum towers on a crag above the river, painted by Turner, and the walk down to the Welsh Wildlife Centre and the Teifi Marshes below makes it a proper afternoon rather than a stop.

What to skip, and what to seek out

Pembrokeshire has dozens of small mottes and ruins in farmland. Most are earthworks on private ground with no access and nothing to see. Don't build a day around them.

Do, though, look up the Victorian sea forts in the Milford Haven waterway: Stack Rock, Thorn Island, West Blockhouse, Chapel Bay, Fort Popton and Hubberston Fort. Built in the 1850s–60s against a French invasion that never came, they're some of the strangest structures on the Welsh coast — one of them sits on a rock in the middle of the Haven, and another was a hotel until fairly recently. Most are best seen from the water or the Coast Path rather than visited.

Practicalities

Pembroke, Carew and Cilgerran are managed sites with admission charges and seasonal hours; Manorbier and Picton are privately run. Cadw operates some of the smaller sites free of charge, including Lamphey Bishop's Palace and St Davids Bishop's Palace — the latter being the best ruin in the county and, oddly, not a castle at all.

See every castle and fort we hold, or where to stay near Pembroke.