West Angle Bay to Freshwater West

The Angle peninsula is the corner where the sheltered Milford Haven waterway ends and the open Atlantic begins, and you can feel the change in about a mile of walking.

West Angle Bay is the gentle end: a sandy, east-facing bay with a car park, a café and the best rock pooling on this stretch of coast at low tide. Offshore sits Thorn Island, with a Victorian fort covering nearly the whole of it — one of the ring of forts built in the 1850s and 60s to defend the naval dockyard at Pembroke Dock. It later spent decades as a hotel reached by boat, and is now private.

Walk south out of the bay and the path climbs onto the headland. Almost immediately you're past the ruins of the East Blockhouse, a Tudor gun tower built under Henry VIII to guard the Haven entrance, with later wartime concrete added around it. It's a good illustration of how continuously this bit of coast has been fortified.

Round the corner at Sheep Island and Rat Island the walking changes: no more shelter, the ground low and windswept, and the swell coming in properly from the west. There are no facilities on this section and there is nowhere to hide from the weather.

The path then runs south above Guttle Hole and Frainslake Sands — the latter falls inside the Castlemartin military estate and is not accessible — before dropping to Freshwater West.

Freshwater West is a mile and a half of sand backed by big dunes, and it is genuinely spectacular. It's also lethal. The rips here have killed people and there are no lifeguards; treat it as a beach to walk on. On the dune edge stands a restored thatched seaweed drying hut, the last of the huts where laver was dried for laverbread. It's had a second career as a film location too — Robin Hood was shot here in 2010, and the Shell Cottage scenes for the last Harry Potter films, which is why people occasionally wander the dunes looking for Dobby's grave. The National Trust has asked visitors to stop leaving objects there.

Where to finish. Angle village has a pub or two and there's the café at West Angle Bay. There is nothing at Freshwater West beyond a car park, toilets and, in season, a food van.

Continuing south. The next stage crosses the Castlemartin ranges — read the Freshwater West to Stack Rocks notes before you plan it, because it is not a normal bit of Coast Path.