Tenby’s paid attractions are mostly out of town. In the town itself, almost everything worth doing is free: four sandy beaches, a medieval walled circuit, a headland with a museum and a view, the largest parish church in Wales, a harbour that is the most photographed thing in the county, and the Pembrokeshire Coast Path running through the middle.
For a resort of this quality that is unusual, and it is a large part of why families keep coming back.
All four are free and all are within a few minutes of the town walls.
South Beach — two kilometres of sand running to Giltar Point, with dunes behind. The biggest and the emptiest.
Castle Beach — below Castle Hill, with St Catherine’s Island and its Victorian fort offshore, walkable at low tide. The best rock pools in the town.
North Beach — a curve of sand below the walls with Goskar Rock standing in the middle of it.
Harbour Beach — small, sheltered and beside the boats.
Only parking costs anything, and cars are excluded from the centre in summer anyway. Our beaches guide has the detail.
The town walls were begun in the 1090s and rebuilt in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, and a long stretch survives. The Five Arches on South Parade — the barbican gate — is free, open and the second most photographed thing in Tenby.
Walking the line of the walls and the medieval streets inside them costs nothing and takes an hour. Cars are banned from the historic centre in summer, which makes it a genuinely pleasant town to walk about in rather than merely a pretty one.
The headland between North and Castle beaches, almost separated from the town, with:
The fragments of Tenby Castle — a thirteenth-century tower and wall on the highest point.
The Prince Albert memorial, in white marble, looking out to sea.
A view over both beaches, the harbour, St Catherine’s Island and across to Caldey.
Tenby Museum and Art Gallery is up here too and charges a modest entry — worth it, but the hill itself is free.
The picture that sells Tenby: a small tidal basin with boats drying out at low water and pastel-painted Georgian houses stacked on the cliff above. It costs nothing to sit and look at, and it is best in the early morning before the day visitors arrive or in the evening when the light comes round.
The lifeboat station on Castle Beach is one of the more dramatically sited in Britain, launching down a slipway into the sea, and it is free to look at.
Free and open. The largest parish church in Wales, with a fifteenth-century wagon roof, a chancel that leans noticeably, and the tomb of Thomas White, the mayor who in 1471 hid the fourteen-year-old Henry Tudor — the future Henry VII — in his cellar and then shipped him to safety in France. A fair claim to having changed English history from a merchant’s basement in Tenby.
The Pembrokeshire Coast Path runs through the town and is free for all 190 miles of it.
North to Saundersfoot — five kilometres of easy cliff and woodland, with a train back — and on through the old coal tramway tunnels to Wiseman’s Bridge and Amroth, where the path begins.
South across the golf links at Penally to Giltar Point for the best view back at Tenby, and on to Lydstep and Skrinkle Haven. Check the Penally range firing times first.
Our walks guide has the routes.
Colby Woodland Garden at Amroth is National Trust and charges, but the surrounding woodland walks and Amroth beach with its submerged forest at very low tides are free.
Manorbier beach below the castle is free, and so is looking at the castle from it.
Freshwater East and the beaches along the south Pembrokeshire coast cost nothing.
St Govan’s Chapel, eighteen kilometres west, is a thirteenth-century chapel built into a cleft in the limestone cliff, free and open except when the Castlemartin range is firing.
Seals are seen from the cliffs and around Caldey Sound, particularly in autumn when the pups appear.
Seabirds crowd the cliffs from April to July, and the rock ledges around St Catherine’s Island and Giltar Point hold nesting birds.
Rock pools at Castle Beach and Manorbier at low tide are free and genuinely good.
Parking, and cars are excluded from the centre in summer, so you will be leaving it on the edge and walking anyway. There are car parks at the top of the town and a park and ride in season.
Tenby has its own railway station, a few minutes from the town, on the line from Swansea and Carmarthen with services to Saundersfoot, Manorbier, Pembroke and Pembroke Dock. Several of the best walks and days out are reachable from it, and a car-free stay here works well.
Start on the harbour early, before the crowds, then up onto Castle Hill for the view over both beaches. Down to Castle Beach and across to St Catherine’s Island if the tide allows. Through the walled town, the Five Arches and St Mary’s Church. Lunch on South Beach. In the afternoon walk the coast path north to Saundersfoot — ninety minutes — and take the train back.
A medieval town, four beaches, a tidal island and a cliff walk, for the price of one train ticket.
The first free day covered the town. The second should go along the coast. Walk the Pembrokeshire Coast Path north to Saundersfoot — five kilometres of cliff and woodland — then continue through the old coal tramway tunnels along the shore to Coppet Hall and Wiseman’s Bridge, and on to Amroth where the path begins. Train back from Saundersfoot or Kilgetty.
Or go south: across the golf links at Penally to Giltar Point for the best view back at Tenby and across to Caldey, then on to Lydstep if the range is not firing.
Worth checking. The Tudor Merchant’s House and Colby Woodland Garden are National Trust; Carew and Manorbier are privately run; Lamphey Bishop’s Palace and St Davids Bishop’s Palace are Cadw, the Welsh heritage body, which has reciprocal arrangements with English Heritage.
For a week of castles and gardens in Pembrokeshire, an existing membership goes further than you would expect.
Tenby’s calendar has more in it than a town of five thousand should manage. The Tenby Arts Festival in September, the Boxing Day swim — several hundred people in fancy dress running into Carmarthen Bay, which is free to watch and cheaper to watch than to join — and a summer programme of events on the beaches and in the town square are all free.
The Ironman Wales weekend in September closes roads and fills the town, and the spectating is free and remarkably good; the run course goes through the walled town and the atmosphere is unlike anything else in the Welsh calendar.
Yes, all four. Only parking is charged, and cars are excluded from the town centre in summer.
Yes, and it is the largest parish church in Wales.
You can walk their line through the streets and see long surviving stretches including the Five Arches gate; there is no continuous wall-top walk as at Conwy.
Yes — the headland, the castle fragments, the memorial and the view. Only the museum on it charges.
The beaches, the rock pools at Castle Beach, Goskar Rock on North Beach, and St Catherine’s Island at low tide.