A Year in Wales: Pembrokeshire:Meeting Russell Crowe...well almost!

Hi all,

We just spent a weekend at Tenby in a 3 bedroom on-site van at Kiln Park. The van belongs to one of Kristin's workmates and it is almost as big as the house we are living in Cardiff!!! Kiln Park is like a little town, it would have about 300 vans like the one we stayed in, a small supermarket, a bar, a Burger King, Fish & Chip shop, Indoor and outdoor pool, a huge entertainment complex, next door to the Golf Course, etc... The park is located about a 15-20 minute walk along a wide sandy beach from the

Tenby town centre. We arrived Friday evening.

On Saturday, we went touring of the South West corner of Wales, Pembrokeshire. From Tenby we headed to Manorbier, which has the obligatory castle and also a nice little sandy beach. We travelled along the coast (although no sights from the road) until we arrived at a beautiful beach at Broadhaven South (actually nowhere near Broadhaven!!), being National Trust members we got free parking! The man at the gate was extremely helpful and pointed out where else we should go - including meeting Russell

Crowe!! the Broadhaven south beach was very pretty in a cove with a very big beach (tide was way out). Next stop around the corner was St.Govan's. At St.Govan's there is a chapel (built about 600 AD) on the cliff face above the water - see pics. Personally I couldn't think of a worse place to build a chapel!

Next stop was Stack Rocks and Green Bridge, which is located next to the tank firing range. From here we headed to Freshwater West, a mile long surf beach. On the beach was the film

set for Russell Crowe's next movie, Robin Hood, directed by Ridley Scott. The set-up here for the film was something you had to see to believe. The latest Harry Potter movie was also filmed here the week earlier. We spent about an hour and a half watching several takes of long boats landing and horses charging, camp fires, smoke bombs, helicopter camera shots,etc.. There would have been close to 300 actors and 100 horses in the scenes. On the Web Albums there are several movies and lots of pics. Rusty was a bit busy to talk to us, but I'm sure if time permitted he would have!! It

was amazing to see the work behind the filming of a scene. Apparently the scene was about French soldiers arriving at Dover, they will use CGI to make the sand dune cliffs white.
From Freshwater we went through Pembroke (another castle - I've been reliably informed that there 365 castles in Wales - one for each day of the year!) and then headed to St. David's. St. David's is the spiritual capital of Wales and also the smallest city in the UK (Wells is the smallest in England). It has city status because of St. David's Cathedral, but it is no more than a big village.
We headed home to Tenby and walked into town for dinner. In the town centre there was few Hen's nights going on and there were plenty of pissed people (8

pm) - I'm sure they had an early start watching the British Lions lose in rugby to Sth. Africa.
On Sunday we went into Tenby again to catch a boat for a trip to Caldey Island, but the boats don't run on Sundays!! So we had lunch and packed up and headed back to Cardiff.
Cheers.