To be honest I can't believe it's taken me so long to write a review on Pembrey Country Park, which is on the coast of South Wales, located near the village of Pembrey, Carmarthenshire, and the town of Llanelli. The country park is an amazing venue with acres and acres 500 in fact of forest and trails to explore plus eight miles of the most glorious sandy beach - Cefn Sidan beach.
Pembrey is just an amazing place and it's somewhere I go to about four times a year with the dogs it's a much love venue for Canicross we're very grateful that CaniX choose to do at least four competitions a year there. I think the organizer would actually do more if they could!
It was actually only back in Easter that I actually discovered the heritage of Pembury it was actually a bomb-making factory and myself and the dogs went on the Historic Trail and learned so much about it and I was pretty shocked to learn that just a couple of decades ago it didn't even exist and was actually going to be used as a shooting range by the Ministry of Defense, fortunately, because of a lot of pressure and a big campaign to Save Our Sands as it was known the campaign won the legal challenge and Pembury became the country park that so many people know and love.
See our Historic Trail
Video
I've stayed in the park quite often at CaniX events but I usually like to bookend the event which an extra night or two at the Caravan And Motorhome Club site, now Pembrey Country Park has it’s own site but unfortunately they don't allow you to have more than three dogs but the pitches are all grass and set in blocks but with EHU and a shower and toilet block. The Caravan Club is a lovely site as you would expect with a little bit more privacy due to the layout of the pitches which are all hard standing but with an abundance of grassy areas around.
It's easy to get to into the park as it's literally right at the the entry to the park so you can walk there without having to pay for parking and it's probably about a 10 15-minute walk down to the beach.
There's a variety of different entrances that can get you onto the beach now during the winter months up to May and then not again until the end of September you can go on via the main entrance to the beach which is fairly easy to navigate with a stroller it's a little bit of soft sand that requires a little bit of pulling but you know you're talking about maybe 20 meters of soft sand and then it's okay. Outside of those months you do have to negotiate the sand dunes to get to the dog friendly parts of the beach now this is something that I've done quite a lot!
I've got quite a few videos of doing it, it's not the easiest but it's well worth it seeing my disabled dogs loving their run down the sand dunes (seriously they do) but have so much fun on the beach and the great thing is because there is so much beach and actually even season when you go to some of these areas that you can only get to via the dunes it's actually pretty quiet which is a bit of a dream!
If beach is not your thing there are so many trails and the forest has really good track as well so no problem for either dogs on wheels or strollers and to be honest it's a bit of a saying if you haven't got lost at Pembury you haven't been there enough! Because just back in January I got lost there out on a walk and I've been going there since I think 2011 so that gives you a bit of an idea what it is like lol. It is easy to do take a little wrong turn and then you're like oh where am I! The advantage of me getting lost this time was actually I had a far better idea of my surroundings than I have done in previous years when I've got lost!
It gets very very busy over the bank holidays and the holidays but if you step off the main paths and go on to some of the trails you could do a three-hour walk and not see a soul it is fantastic. It really is a wonderful place and so much to do for the whole family and like I said I did the Historical Trial and it was fascinating and well worth doing.
I really recommend Pembrey it's a wonderful place and there's an abundance of parking (if you're going for more than a couple of days it's definitely worth paying in advance and getting it cheaper) and no height restriction - lots of toilets and also a cafe that also caters for vegans too!
We will be back there in the summer and my van definitely carries with it a little bit of Pembrey everywhere - sand…..
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