Tuesday, we set out to explore Tenby in the morning. The hotel we were staying in, Hotel Atlantic, was right on the esplanade that ran along the edge of a cliff that fell away to the beach. We crossed the esplanade and took these pictures of Tenby beach, first to the south, then to the north:

You can see that it was low tide. It turns out that the little island offshore that I thought was a monastery is actually a fortress and the island is called St. Catherine’s. I thought that it was only accessible by boat, but at low tide it’s also accessible from the beach by a staircase (although it is presently closed to the public). The fort was built in the 1700s in anticipation of an invasion from the european continent that never occurred; consequently, it was never used and was abandoned shortly after completion.

We walked down the staircase from the hotel to the beach and I took this picture back up. That structure at the top is a windowed viewing area that belongs to our hotel.

In this picture, you can see our hotel at the top and the windowed viewing area about midway down the cliff face.

It was a beautiful beach and hardly anybody on it but us.

Dale spotted a crack in the cliff face that ended up being a cave. We went in and explored.

Then we walked down the beach toward St. Catherine’s Island. The hotels are all along the esplanade that runs along the waterfront:

Just past St. Catherine’s Island, there’s a staircase leading up to the original fortress that was built in in Norman times, around 1080. The stone tower just to the left of the white building on the top of the bluff is all that’s left of the original fortress.

We hiked up to the top of the bluff and I took this picture of St. Catherine’s Island.

As we walked around the top of the bluff, we came upon a lady feeding the gulls and pigeons. She and Dale became immediate best friends.

The gulls, used to being fed daily by our new friend, were very docile and didn’t mind me getting right up to them to take pictures. The gulls here in Wales seemed much bigger than the ones we have in Florida, but, maybe it was just that I was able to get so close.