Whitesands & Porthmelgan

A huge expanse of white sand, as it says on the tin, Whitesands is the most popular beach on the St David’s peninsula. The only time Chris and I had been here before was 5 years previously when we spent about 20 minutes experiencing one of the most incredible sunsets ever!

Today, Sunday, 8 of us shared this lovely short walk between Whitesands and Porthmelgan. Yvey, Matt, Kay Marie, Russ, Leigh and Dee met with Chris and I in the car park at Whitesands Bay and we started off with a relaxing coffee in the large cafe and shop located at the car park.

For info: the car park is fairly big and had few cars when we arrived at about 10:30. The cost to park for the day was £6 which we paid in cash to a car park attendant. As we left at around 2.45 pm, the car park was much busier.

The weather at the beginning of this short walk was dull and grey and somewhat underwhelming.

But even with the clouds, the vistas were still breathtaking.

We followed the coast path keeping the rugged scenery to our left as we walked towards Porthmelgan, a beach we had never previously visited.

After 20 minutes we arrived at Porthmelgan beach. Again, with the dreary weather and also with the tide being in this small area of sand was a little bit disappointing.

However unlike Whitesands beach, it was dog friendly so the humans found some flat rocks as base to sit while our 4 legged furry friends (Ralphy, Kash, Jess and Chino) had a run around.

Within about half an hour, Leigh and Dee had continued walking along the coast path and Kay Marie had walked back to her car to travel home and the remaining 5 of us stayed put on Porthmelgan beach. Thankfully, as we sat eating our packed lunch, the clouds began to break, blue sky started to appear and the sun began to shine through.

As the tide been going out, and with the sun now casting its light across the bay, the entire beach metamorphosized into a beautiful sparkling little slice of paradise.

What a transformation!

The receding tide had exposed more caves!

Leigh and Dee returned from their extended walk and Russ went back to his car to drive home.

Chris and I clambered over the rocks and came across another cave.

Once Leigh and Dee had finished their lunch we were all ready to leave the beach and walk back for 20 minutes to the car park.

Back at the huge Whitesands beach which was now in the sun and busy with a few more people. But not exactly crowded!

We finished this walk with another visit to the cafe and this time for an ice cream. I had a ‘Saint David’s’ which was vanilla ice cream swirled with caramel sauce, buttered pecans, toffee pieces and dark chocolate chips! A speciality ice cream which was made in Wales and tasted delicious!

While eating ice creams we looked for somewhere else to visit for the rest of the afternoon but this was tricky with no mobile signal and no wifi in the cafe. We then found the road going north was closed. In the end the remaining 6 of us drove back to our campsites in St Davids, picked up drinks, snacks and chairs and spent the remainder of the afternoon having a few laughs and a bit of a chill sitting on our own Caerfai beach.

As mentioned above, the sunset at Whitesands beach from 5 years ago!

A short video to conclude this series of 3 posts covering our recent trip to the Pembrokeshire Coast.