Day 5 Pembroke to Sandy Haven



Statistics:
16 miles
600 metres ascent
43,000 steps
1 cider
2 gins

Another hearty breakfast, this time at the Coach House Inn in Pembroke.  We were off this morning early on a mostly urban hike through Pembroke, Pembroke Docks, Milford Haven and then onto our destination Sandy Haven today.  We started off backtracking across the river near the Castle and then heading towards the Pembroke Docks.

Every picture needs a splash of color, don't you think?

  A picture of the Cledddau bridge that we would soon cross as we were heading into the Pembroke Docks
The Pembroke Dockyards is actually a small town within Pembroke that was built in 1814 to support the extensive Naval Dockyards built there.  The towns economy then was built entirely around shipbuilding at the time, building over 250 ships and 3 royal yachts before the shipyard was finally closed in 1926.  It was briefly revived again during WWII but has for the most part fallen into decay since then.  Nevertheless it is impressive to see the extensive military infrastructure built pre-world wars.

Our Welsh lesson for the day.  Say it in Welsh 3 times fast.

Heading towards Milford Haven.

Interesting mural, walking through town

One of the many bridges we crossed to get over the sea of pipelines heading towards the large LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) dock outside Milford Haven.  


We came across quite a few massive wind mills along the path, sometimes passing right underneath them.  The noise they made and the sheer size of them was quite impressive.

Finally we arrived in the town of Milford Haven and made our way to the harbour for a quick lunch.  


When we arrived here at our destination for the day, Sandy Haven, we had originally planned to stop at the pub you can see in the picture above (White building) but the tide had come in an hour earlier and there was literally no way to cross to the pub.  So, we headed to our B&B to check in and get ready for dinner.  The tide is expected to be back out tomorrow at 10:30, so we will attempt our crossing then and continue our journey along the path .   The problem with missing the tide crossings is that we will add 6 1/2 mile to our journey...pitter patter as we have 2 tidal crossings today!


A local Welsh Spiced Rum that we found particularly delicious especially on ice cream.


One of many war memorials in this "naval" area

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