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By GENIE HARRISON Published: 15:15 BST, 14 April 2025 | Updated: 16:13 BST, 14 April 2025
Dinbych-y-pysgod (‘little fort of the fish’), or Tenby, as it’s better known, was once one of Wales’s most important fishing ports.Then, when bank holidays were introduced in the late 1800s, this pocket of Pembrokeshire became the coveted seaside destination for Victorian tourists, even nicknamed: ‘the Naples of Wales’.Its appeal persists today; some two million people visit every year, and it’s not difficult to see why. At any time of year, it’s a joy to walk among Tenby’s thirteenth-century walls and pastel cottages, and along the vast sandy beaches.Tucked off Upper Frog Street, Fuchsia is an ideal morning stop-off. We load up for the day with huge cups of coffee and a full Welsh – remarkably similar to its English sister, as far as I can tell.A brief march up Castle Hill lands us at Tenby’s Museum and Art Gallery, teeming with local art and biological artefacts, and DIY postcards sketched by visitors as far-flung as Morocco.The museum explains Tenby’s literary links: Roald Dahl and Beatrix Potter spent summers here, and Dylan Thomas gave one of few readings from Under Milk Wood in a local pub.Now well-versed in local history, we walk back along the hilltop into town, where the abundant seafront hotels and restaurants are starting to welcome beachgoers.From here, it’s a brief 10-minute stroll back to St Mary’s Hill Chapel, the converted nineteenth-century chapel where we’re staying. We spend the afternoon basking in the sun on the terraced gardens, dipping in the hot tub to relax. Genie Harrison visits Tenby, a seaside town in Wales where Roald Dahl and Beatrix Potter spent their childhood summers, for a weekend getaway St. Mary’s Hill chapel is a five-bedroom, four-bathroom holiday home just ten minutes from Tenby station The French doors of the former chapel open onto a paved terrace complete with a barbecue. There is also a hot tub on the rear terraced gardens A 20-minute drive from Tenby, Paternoster Farm is open for dinner on Friday and Saturday evenings and occasional summer Sundays. The brainchild of one-woman operation Michelle Evans, the menu is set, and different every evening.‘The road is part of the experience’, says our taxi driver, as we trundle up the farm’s driveway, but we’re grateful for her know-how; the scrawled entrance sign to the converted cowshed gives little away.Sipping on pisco sours, we eat trout and caramelised onions, smoked hake and Welsh rarebit on sourdough, and wild garlic mash with faggot meatballs. The food is exquisite but unpretentious, enhanced by the bucolic setting.Next morning, we leave the chapel and head for the shops. Many of them wouldn’t be out of place on an affluent London high street. I snap up three pastel-coloured candles to take home with my Welsh cakes from bakery Loafley.In a letter to a friend, Roald Dahl once declared: ‘An Easter holiday is hardly an Easter holiday without Tenby.’ A lot has changed since he visited in the early 1900s, but the town’s charm is just as palpable today. Travel Facts Return trains from Paddington to Tenby from £105 (gwr.com). Family-run Coastal Cottages offer a range of Pembrokeshire properties, including St. Mary’s Hill Chapel from £855 for a three-night stay for up to 10 people (coastalcottages.co.uk). Double rooms at the beachfront Giltar Hotel available from £92 (giltar-hotel.co.uk).
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I visited Roald Dahl’s favourite holiday spot – it’s as delightful as when the writer stayed nearly 100 years ago
