The Pembrokeshire Coast Path is a hundred and eighty-six miles of waymarked national trail along the coast of south-west Wales. It is walked by about thirty thousand people each year, most of them in May, June, July, August, and September. In February it is walked by perhaps a hundred and fifty.
A walker named Eira Llewellyn covered fifty-three miles of it between Tenby and St Davids in seven days in the middle of February 2026. She walked alone. She stayed in three pubs, one B&B, two YHA hostels, and one self-catering cottage. She saw fewer than a dozen other walkers in seven days on the path.
Llewellyn is fifty-one. She works as a hospital pharmacist in Carmarthen and she walks long sections of the path each winter when the trail is empty. She has done so for fourteen years.
She began at the Tenby South Beach car park at 0830 on a Saturday morning. The temperature was three degrees Celsius. There was a steady south-westerly wind of about twenty knots. The sea was grey-green and heavy. She wore wool baselayers, a Paramo Velez smock, lightweight gaiters, and waterproof leather boots.
The first day, Tenby to Manorbier, was nine miles. The path climbs almost immediately out of Tenby onto cliffs of old red sandstone. The light, in February, is what Llewellyn calls writing light: low, raking, sharp-edged. The cliffs at this stretch fall about thirty metres to a shingle beach. The path runs along the top, often within two metres of the edge.
She passed three walkers in the first nine miles, all of them local, all of them out for a morning. By midday she had the path to herself. She reached Manorbier at three and checked into a B&B in the village.
The second day was Manorbier to Bosherston, twelve miles. The wind had risen overnight. By the time she reached the cliffs above Skrinkle Haven the wind was thirty-five knots and the spray from breaking waves was reaching the path. She walked the cliff section more slowly than she had planned.
At Stackpole Quay she stopped for thirty minutes at the National Trust tea room. It was open in February by reservation only and she had reserved. She ate a bowl of soup and dried her gloves on the radiator. The young man behind the counter said she was the first walker of the week.
From Stackpole to Bosherston the path crosses the deer park and the lily ponds. The lily ponds in February are a dark, still grey. The path runs along the eastern shore and crosses a small bridge built by the National Trust in the 1980s.
She stayed at the Olde Worlde Cafe and B&B in Bosherston, which has been there since 1972. The owner, a woman in her seventies, gave her a room overlooking the church and a hot water bottle for the bed.
The third day was the longest, Bosherston to Freshwater West, fifteen miles. It included the Castlemartin firing range, which is closed to walkers when red flags are flying. Llewellyn had checked the firing schedule by telephone before she left and the range was open all day.
The Castlemartin section is one of the most remote on the path. The MOD has owned the land since 1939 and the absence of grazing has produced a coastal grassland that is among the most botanically rich in Britain. In February the grassland was wet and dun-coloured. There were no flowers. The cliffs were spectacular.
She passed nobody on the Castlemartin section. The path is faint in places and she navigated by compass for a kilometre near the Green Bridge of Wales, where the official route has been moved inland from an earlier line that has eroded into the sea.
The fourth day was Freshwater West to Dale, fourteen miles. The wind dropped overnight. The morning was clear and cold and she walked in sunshine for the first three hours. The Marloes Peninsula, on the fifth day, gave her seals at Martin's Haven and a long view to Skomer Island, which she had been to in summer many times and which looked, from February's vantage, like a different country.
At Dale she stayed in a self-catering cottage she had booked two months in advance. She cooked her own dinner, a chickpea and tomato stew, and read for two hours in front of the woodburner.
The sixth day, Dale to Marloes, was only seven miles, a deliberate easy day. She arrived at the YHA hostel at Marloes Sands at two in the afternoon and walked down to the beach for an hour. The beach was empty. There were oystercatchers at the tide line and a single fishing boat about half a mile out.
The seventh day was the longest by feeling, although not by distance. Marloes to St Davids is technically two days for most walkers, but Llewellyn had set herself to do it in one long winter day of about sixteen miles. She started at 0700 in headlamp light.
She walked through the morning in steady rain. By lunchtime the rain had stopped but the path was running with surface water in many places. She crossed the cliffs above Newgale at one in the afternoon and stopped for half an hour in the cafe at the surf-school car park, which was closed for the season but had a small takeaway hatch open.
She reached St Davids at five in the evening. The light was already going. She walked into the cathedral close and sat on a stone wall for ten minutes before she went to find her hostel.
She said later that the seven days had been the quietest walking she had done in two years. She had heard the sea and the wind and her own boots on the stone, and very little else. She intends to walk the next fifty miles, St Davids to Newport, in February 2027.
She does not recommend the winter walk to people who have not walked the path in summer first. She does, quietly, recommend it to people who have.
