Where to Stay in Solva: Harbour, Hill or the Farms Behind

Solva is the harbour village people photograph and then wish they'd booked. A long, narrow inlet winds inland between green hills, the boats lean on their keels twice a day when the water goes, and the pastel cottages of Lower Solva sit at the head of it with two pubs, a handful of galleries and a café on the quay. St Davids is three miles west, Newgale's two miles of surf beach three miles east, and the Coast Path runs through the village in both directions.

It is small, which is the whole point and also the catch: there are only so many beds in Solva itself, and the ones by the harbour go first. Where you stay splits three ways.

Lower Solva: by the harbour

The village proper is the cluster at the bottom of the hill around the harbour — Main Street and the quay. Stay here and you're on foot for everything: the harbour beach that appears at low water, crabbing off the wall, the Harbour Inn with its tables by the boats, the Ship further up the street, Cafe on the Quay and the Hats and Barrels for supper. The walk up the Gribin, the ridge that separates the harbour from the open sea, starts at the car park.

Two things to know. The harbour is a drying one: at high tide it's water to the wall and at low tide it's sand, shingle and mud with the boats sitting on it, so "harbour view" means both. And parking is the large council car park by the harbour rather than outside your door — most of the old cottages have none, so check the listing's parking line and believe it.

Best for couples, anyone without a car (see below), and people who want to walk out of the door to a pub and a view.

Upper Solva: on the hill

The newer half of the village climbs the hill on the St Davids side, a ten-minute walk up from the harbour and a steeper one back with the shopping. Up here you get parking, quieter nights and often a view down the inlet, at the price of the hill every time you go down. Solva's campsites are on this side too: Solva Camping above the harbour and Nine Wells on the St Davids road, a walk down to Caerbwdi cove. Parc Hall and The Mount are the caravan parks. The full open-data list is on campsites near Solva.

Best for families with a car and tents, and for walkers doing the Whitesands to Solva and Solva to Newgale stretches of the path.

The farms behind: three miles inland, the whole peninsula in reach

Most of the cottage stock we've hand-picked around Solva isn't in the village at all. It's on the farm holdings on the lanes inland, three miles or so from the harbour, and for a lot of trips that is the better base: parking outside the door, a garden, and St Davids, Solva, Newgale and the north coast at Abereiddi and Porthgain all within a ten-minute drive rather than one of them on foot. The four cottages at Llanddinog are the example — a stone cottage for two, a wooden cabin for two, a three-bedroom for four and a big one sleeping twelve, on one yard, which the listings say can be booked together for a group of twenty. Their own beach arithmetic: Traeth Llyfn a mile, the Blue Lagoon five, Newgale five, Whitesands eight and a half.

For a bigger party, Llys Aber is a Georgian house a third of a mile from the harbour: five bedrooms for ten, a wood burner and an electric car charger, and the harbour, the pubs and the Coast Path all walkable from the door. It takes no dogs, which rules it out for some, but it is the largest thing we list in the village. The rest of what we hold for Solva is on the Solva page. We link to a cottage only when we've read the provider's own description and can say what it is; the ones without a write-up are there for completeness, not as recommendations.

Hotels and B&Bs

Solva has no hotel to speak of. The rooms in the village are above the pubs and in a few guest houses, and Booking.com's search for Solva returned 29 places when we checked in September 2026, most of them small. For a hotel proper you're looking at St Davids, three miles away, which has the country-house hotels and the Nun Street guest houses.

Without a car

Solva is one of the easiest villages in the county to do car-free. The T11 bus between Haverfordwest and St Davids stops in the village, and in summer the Puffin Shuttle works the St Brides Bay coast through Solva to Newgale, Broad Haven and Little Haven. That turns the two Coast Path sections either side into linear walks with a bus back — see Pembrokeshire's coastal buses.

Beaches from here

The harbour beach is a low-tide beach for crabbing and paddling, not a day on the sand. For that, Newgale is three miles east — two miles of sand, surf hire and lifeguards in season, with the middle third closed to dogs from May to September and the ends open all year. Porthmynawyd, the hidden cove between the two, is a fifteen-minute field walk from the lane at Pointz Castle and gets good sand from half-tide down. West, Caerfai is St Davids' own beach and Whitesands the big one.

The honest bit

We haven't stayed in any of these places and we don't score them. The cottages above are ones we've written up from the provider's own listing; the pubs, campsites and beaches come from open data and our own beach notes. The Booking.com search is a paid link, marked as one, and the list on this page doesn't change according to who pays us — nobody does. For the peninsula as a whole, our St Davids guide is the other half of this one.