DISCOVER - SOUTH PEMBROKESHIRE

From the peaceful, tree-banked waterways of the Cleddau Estuary to the spectacular sea stacks, castles and villages of the coast, south Pembrokeshire is the perfect place to while away a spring or summer holiday, promises Julie Brominicks

- Julie Brominicks

I know I'm in Wales but my brain won't compute. Scotland it suggests, maybe Brittany? Trying to process the shimmer, the tidal whoosh, the lattice of twisted branches, it refers to memory - perhaps ancient memory.

Irrigated by an oceanic climate, oak woodland similar to this once dominated the Atlantic fringe of Europe, from Scotland to Portugal. The gale-stunted sessile oaks belie their age. Light, too, deceives. Bouncing off the Cleddau, it shifts through the trees.

And the water sounds strange to my ears - neither river-gurgle nor wave-play, this is estuary music. The steadily increasing 'whoosh' crept up on me even as the sound of oars in rowlocks and the chatter of friends who rowed me to Lawrenny, dissolves. At the Garron Pill's confluence with the Daugleddau Estuary, I hear the 'wheeep' of a sandpiper and the tremulous warbling of curlews. This soundscape and its indication of a landscape less disturbed - is precious.

LAND AND SEA

Pembrokeshire is a broad maritime peninsula in south-west Wales split by the Milford Haven Waterway. While Pembrokeshire's geologically diverse north is dominated by the Preseli Hills, the south is underpinned mostly by bands of old red sandstone and carboniferous limestone that outcrop at the coast and support rolling pastures speckled with cows and sheep.

During the 11th and 12th centuries, this southern area was conquered by Normans, who left behind churches and castles. The 'Landsker Line' is a term for the imaginary border, which, prior to language reintroduction initiatives, separated the predominantly Welsh-speaking north from the Anglo-Norman south.