Where to Stay in Lydstep: The Private Bay, the Headland and the Cottages Behind

Lydstep sits on the A4139 exactly halfway between Tenby and Manorbier: a church, a scatter of houses along a road that carries steady summer traffic, and two quite different pieces of coast below it. It has no village centre to speak of. People stay here for the position and the limestone cliff scenery, and they should know what they are getting before they book.

Is Lydstep beach private?

This is the question, so here is the answer. Lydstep Haven is a wide, gently curving south-facing bay of clean sand looking across Carmarthen Bay with Caldey Island off to the east - shallow, sheltered, and one of the calmer swimming beaches on this coast. It is also largely occupied by a long-established holiday park, and reaching the sand normally means going through the park. Arrangements change, so check the current position before you drive there; turning up expecting a public car park can end badly.

If you are staying in the park, or you have established that access is available, it is an excellent family beach - long flat sand at low tide, safe paddling, and enough room that it never feels crammed. It is unguarded beyond whatever cover the park provides, and the tide comes in across that flat sand at a fair pace.

What is free and open to anyone is the land above it. Lydstep Point and the headland are National Trust, with a short clifftop circuit, wildflower grassland and views along the whole south coast. Below the western headland are the Lydstep Caverns, sea caves cut into the limestone and reachable from the beach at very low tide - spectacular, genuinely risky, and not to be attempted without a tide table and local advice.

Staying in the park

The holiday park above the bay dominates the supply here, and it is the obvious choice if you want the beach, a pool and the facilities in one place; Mash and Barrel is the bar-restaurant inside it. Our hand-picked entry for it sleeps eight and is the only stay in the whole collection that walks straight onto its own beach and has an indoor pool for the wet days - which, on this coast, there will be.

Staying out of it

Celtic Haven is the other cluster: a clifftop resort at the Lydstep end with a nine-hole course looking out over Caldey, a spa, and a spread of cottages converted around a farm courtyard. Most of those come through the feed without descriptions we can work from, so they sit on the Lydstep page as listings rather than recommendations for now.

Inland, the lanes towards Penally and Manorbier hold ordinary cottages with gardens and parking, which is the quieter way to do this stretch. The Dwelling Place is the one we have written up: a double and a twin in a farm setting in the middle of the village, solar-powered heating, a gas fire, a large shared garden with countryside views and allocated parking for two in a private courtyard, with the pub inside half a mile.

The walking, which is the real reason to be here

The Coast Path is excellent in both directions and does not care who owns the beach. East, it runs past Giltar Point to Tenby's South Beach - a mile and a half of dune-backed sand. West, it climbs over the cliffs to Skrinkle Haven and Church Doors Cove, two of the most photographed coves in the county, and on to Manorbier Bay under its castle. Skrinkle is reached from the car park by the old army camp and hostel, then down a long, steep, exposed metal staircase in the cliff; Church Doors has no facilities at all, with the car park and toilets up at the youth hostel. Dogs are welcome all year at both - neither carries a seasonal restriction.

Practical

Tenby is five minutes by car, Manorbier ten, Freshwater East and the Stackpole estate about twenty. The walk from Manorbier to Tenby passes through on the way. If you want a village with a pub, a shop and a beach you can simply walk onto, read where to stay in Manorbier instead - it is two miles west and a different proposition.