Poppit Sands to Ceibwr Bay

Everyone who walks the whole path remembers this stage, usually with respect. After the gentle estuary miles from St Dogmaels, the route climbs out of Poppit past the farm at Allt-y-coed and does not really stop climbing until it stands on Cemaes Head, where the cliffs are commonly given as the highest on the entire path — the top of Pen yr Afr runs to something like 175 metres of nearly vertical rock and heather.

What you get for the effort is the wildest walking in north Pembrokeshire. The headland is a Wildlife Trust reserve, and the cliff strata below it are folded into extraordinary zigzags — the rock here was crumpled like paper when continents collided, and nowhere else on the path shows it so clearly. Grey seals haul out on the shingle coves below from late August; the white pups are visible from the top well into November. Choughs — the red-billed crows that are the National Park's emblem — feed along the turf, and peregrines work the updraughts.

There are no cafés, no farms selling ice cream, no escape routes and, for long stretches, no other people. That is the point of it. Carry water, check the forecast, and give it the third of a day it deserves.

The stage ends at Ceibwr Bay, a narrow shingle inlet in National Trust care where the folded cliffs come down to meet you at eye level. The village of Moylegrove, a mile up the valley, is the nearest civilisation. If you are carrying on, the famous collapsed cave at the Witches' Cauldron is early in the next stage — save some legs for it.