If you’ve ever noticed sheets of what appears to be a translucent brown plastic film covering the rocks and the sand where the surf rolls in, you’ve seen the seaweed known in Wales as laver (or sloke in Ireland). If you’ve ever enjoyed sushi you…

Poised between the windswept coast and the stony volcanic spine of the land above Fishguard and Goodwick, the Pencaer peninsula’s acid soil has never borne rich harvests. Pembrokeshire’s early potato crop has become famous but once upon a time root…

In July 1943, the British government’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) proposed the formation of a top secret trials and training base at Fishguard/Goodwick for its experimental miniature submersibles designed to support reconnaissance, sabotage…

There is a song by the folk rock band The Waterboys called ‘This is the Sea’. It concerns the changes in life, using the sea as a metaphor: Once you were tethered, Now you are free, That was the river, This is the sea. For some reason I had those…

Set high up in the Pencaer peninsula to the east of Strumble Head, Carn Wnda is one of six surviving prehistoric chambered tombs located along this headland. To the east of Carn Wnda are the megalithic sites of Parc y Cromlech (Penrhiw), and the…

During the 1790s Richard Fenton was busy touring his native Pembrokeshire and gathering material for his Historical Tour of Pembrokeshire, published in 1811 to highly positive reviews. This enormous work, beginning and ending in Fishguard, contains…

Richard Fenton (1747-1821), travel writer, poet, lawyer and antiquarian, was a significant Welsh cultural figure who lived in Fishguard from 1793. One of his most influential publications was an edition of the writings of the Tudor historian George…

In the tiny churchyard of Granston, set back from the bay of Abermawr and its smaller neighbour Aberbach, two gravestones bear witness to anonymous victims of the waves. One marks the deaths of Captain Charles Bowlby and his crew of 28 on board the…

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The first member of the Fenton family to arrive in Fishguard - in the late 18th century - was Lieutenant Samuel Fenton, a naval officer who transformed the fortunes of a fishing village so dependent on the local catch that its inhabitants were known…