An extract from "Over half a century in a Pembrokeshire Paradise" written in 1992 by John Hayward Lavis

Walk through National Trust woodland to Abermawr

'The Closing of the Circle'
My wife and I are English born and first came to live in North Pembrokeshire in the late 1950's. Having been away for a few years in the eighties, we have now returned to view the changes that have taken place and ponder the future for this region of Wales.

I am now writing with an ink pen on paper sitting at my desk in the small first floor study of our cottage home, some three miles inland from that remote, roaring storm beach of Abermawr in west Wales. Life here is a daily delight.

The desk at which I sit is a knee-hole design of dark oak and sits directly under the window and on a level with the sill. Whilst I am writing this, if I pause for thought, or more likely for inspiration and raise my head, I look over the village green, which in its turn slopes down and away to a vast and magnificently beautiful wetland marsh, a wild and enchanting waste of reeds and water where hunt marsh harrier and the sparrow hawk. Here also live the heron, the otter and the kingfisher, all in competition, one with the other, for the frogs, eels and wild brown trout which dart over the gravelled shallows of the infant river.

The area referred to near the source of the Western Cleddau is now a National Nature Reserve ' Corsydd Llangloffan' . Otters, water shrews, water voles, polecats and badgers all use the reserve.
For a full description click on the
Countryside Council for Wales .

An accessible boardwalk runs for a kilometre along a circular route through the reserve, direct from the roadside gate.Click on John Hayward Lavis to read his full story.

The reserve lies about five-and-a-half kilometres southwest of Fishguard, just to the north of Castlemorris.

Extract continued:


We have in fact closed the circle. This is where we have finished up - where we buried our mothers and raised our children - a return to roots and a way of life that no longer exists in England. We cannot think of anywhere in the world where we would rather be or any way of life which we would rather lead. We are very lucky.

                                                               Corsydd Llangloffan