Hanging in Pembrokeshire

St Davids cathedral

Recently we got to spend a whole week in Wales, we spent half the time in Pembrokeshire and then headed up to Snowdonia for the rest.  What can I say, I really like Wales.

Nearly all the days in Pembrokeshire were perfect sunny weather, though still perhaps not quite warm enough to venture into the sea.  We also managed to finally get out to St Davids, which is officially Britain's smallest city, and a bit of the tourist attraction in these parts.

In the past, in order to be classified as a city you had to have a cathedral within your town limits. Though this link was abolished in 1888, the citizens of St David lobbied the Queen to get their city status back, which they received in 1994.  So St Davids, a town with only 1600 inhabitants, is a city once more.

The ruins of the Bishops Palace

St David cathedral from the bell tower

St David is actually the patron saint of Wales, and he founded a monastery here way back in 550, and it became one of the most important Christian shrines.  I'm not really sure why this was, it doesn't seem like St David actually did anything spectacular, nor did he die some gruesome death.  The only thing I could find was that he raised a new hill, which in Wales is not all that different.  And a dove landed on his shoulder at some point.  I mean doesn't really compare to St Patrick does it.

Through some clever manoeuvring a later Archbishop of St Davids managed to get the Pope to declare that two pilgrimages to St Davids was worth one to Rome, and three visits was worth one to Jerusalem.  So that probably explains it's popularity, especially amongst the British.  I'm not sure how the Pope decided on the relative holiness of the different cities, but it seems to me that perhaps the Irish weren't as canny as the Welsh, because their saint is obviously way cooler.

The tower ceiling inside the cathedral

The Queen gets a special seat in the choir

The cathedral was quite pretty inside, it had a really long nave, with massive columns.  It seemed as if the floor had been build on a slant though, and I've never seen such a dramatic tilt in supporting columns as I saw there.  I hope someones keeping an eye on that, because it could almost rival the Tower of Pisa's lean.

Next to the cathedral is the ruin of the bishop's palace, this looked like it would have been a fairly impressive building, and apparently had lavish private apartments.  But this suffered during the reformation and there's not much left of it now.

During the 10th and 11th centuries the cathedral had the usual Viking attacks, and the current cathedral is from the 12th century.  It is a pretty little town, and the beaches nearby are, as is usual in Pembrokeshire, pretty nice.  When we visited there were even people swimming, but still not warm enough for us Australians to venture in.

Horses on the beach below Druidstone

What I assume is the coast path

On the way to St Davids we stopped off at Druidstone for lunch.  This seemed to be a spot for ageing hippies to hang out, it was all very new age.  I can imagine they have some pretty trippy events here.  As well as the hippies it also was a haunt for walkers.  It was literally on the coast path, so I can imagine it would be a popular spot for lunch.  And it did have a fairly spectacular view.

It was definitely an adventure getting to it though.  My GPS had no chance finding this place, so it was a bit of iPhone navigation, and desperate scanning of signs.  And these were the true Welsh back roads.  Literally single-lane roads (but traffic comes both ways) with massive stone walls or huge hedges on either side.  Every now and then there would be a passing spot, so if you met someone coming the other way it was always a bit of a stand off before someone would reverse.  I've never been on anything quite like that before.

So apparently I've just found out that this place has actually been running for 39 years.  Which I thought was kind of impressive.  It's also made it's way into the Good Food Guide, which again was a bit of a surprise, though we did manage to spend a very pleasant few hours there.

Taking in the view

Looking back to Druidstone