Kilgetty

Kilgetty is where most people first turn off the main road into holiday Pembrokeshire, at the junction of the A477 and A478, and it is a functional place rather than a pretty one: shops, takeaways, a supermarket, a garage and housing along the road. Its virtues are practical and considerable. It has a railway station on the Pembroke Dock branch line, which makes a car-free holiday genuinely feasible; it has services you will actually use; and it is five to ten minutes from Amroth, Wiseman's Bridge, Saundersfoot and the Tenby road.

There is more history here than the frontage suggests. The village grew on coal and iron — the wooded valleys just north at Stepaside and Pleasant Valley hold the substantial ruins of an ironworks and colliery buildings, now a free-to-wander heritage site with woodland paths, and the old tramways that carried the coal to the coast are the walking routes that link Saundersfoot to Amroth through the shoreline tunnels.

For families the position is close to ideal: Folly Farm is a few minutes north, Heatherton and Oakwood within fifteen, Narberth's restaurants and shops fifteen, Tenby fifteen. Accommodation costs less than the equivalent on the seafront a mile or two away. The trade-off is that there is no beach, no sea view and a lot of through traffic in summer — you are buying convenience and value, not charm, and you should plan to walk or drive to the coast every day.

Holiday parks, lodges and caravan sites cluster around the village and towards Amroth and Stepaside, offering the best-value family accommodation in this corner of the county. Cottages and farm conversions in the lanes north towards Stepaside and Templeton give quieter surroundings with the same access.

At the A477/A478 junction, the main route into south Pembrokeshire. Kilgetty station is on the Pembroke Dock branch line with direct trains from Swansea and Carmarthen, and Saundersfoot and Tenby are the next stops along.