Where to Stay in Narberth: The Food Town and the Country Around It

Narberth is the one Pembrokeshire town people stay in for the town rather than the sea. It's twenty minutes from the coast in every direction, and what it has instead is a High Street of independent shops, more good restaurants per yard than anywhere else in the county, a food festival in September, and a position that puts Tenby, Saundersfoot, the Stackpole beaches and the Preseli hills all within half an hour.

Everything we hold a record for is on the Narberth stay lists — hotels, B&Bs, campsites and holiday parks. This is how it lies.

The town

Narberth's High Street runs from the castle ruins at the bottom to the town hall at the top, and everything worth walking to is on it or just off it. Stay in town and you eat out every night without moving the car — which in a town this size means the guest rooms above and behind the High Street: Top Joe's Townhouse, Max and Caroline's on St James Street, and the Plas Hyfred hotel on Moorfield Road. The Narberth Museum is in the old bonded stores on Church Street. Parking is easier than in the seaside towns but the town car park fills on festival weekend.

The Grove

A mile or so south of the town, the Grove of Narberth is the country house that put Narberth on the food map: a hotel in its own grounds with a restaurant people cross the county for. It's the honest answer to "the nicest place to stay near Narberth" and it prices accordingly.

Canaston Bridge: Bluestone and the woods

Ten minutes west where the A40 crosses the Cleddau, Canaston Wood holds Bluestone, the free-roaming lodge resort with the water park, and the woods around it are the family draw at this end of Narberth. Canaston Oaks is the B&B at the bridge, with a small caravan site alongside, and the Slebech Park estate hotel is on the estuary a little further on. Bluestone is covered on the Narberth page as a labelled partner link; it's lodges rather than a hotel and works as a resort, everything on site.

The country between: Templeton, Kilgetty and the farms

South of Narberth towards the coast the land is farms and small villages, and this is where the campsites and caravan parks are: a cluster around Templeton, more around Kilgetty and Begelly where the road drops towards Saundersfoot, and farm B&Bs like Plas Farmhouse. Folly Farm, the zoo and vintage funfair, is at Begelly with its own holiday park next door. From any of these, Saundersfoot's beach is fifteen minutes and Tenby twenty.

Why inland works

Narberth's case is the map. From here Tenby and Saundersfoot are twenty minutes; Barafundle and the Stackpole coast about thirty; the Preseli hills the same the other way; St Davids an hour. On a wet day you're in a town with things in it rather than a village with a shut café. And Narberth has a station on the Pembroke Dock line — the town is a mile from it — which makes a car-free week here more realistic than in most of the county. See getting around without a car.

The honest bit

We haven't stayed in these places and don't score them. The lists come from open data with websites where the map has them. For hotel and B&B availability on your dates, the Booking.com search on this page and on the Narberth hotel list is a paid link, labelled as one, and doesn't change what's listed.