Today was a day to rest and recuperate and do a little bit of culture.  Our AirBnB was spacious and comfortable and perfect for a lazy day.  The weather was rainy so we were glad not to be on the bikes.

Pembroke is a pleasant little town with a castle perched on the bend of a river. We managed to time our visit to the castle to a time with the least rain.  It felt authentic to be damp and grey!  The oldest parts of the castle dated from the 1100’s but a timber castle had been on the site before. 

There was lots of information but it got slightly confusing as the one way system that had to be implemented for covid meant that the rooms did not follow chronologically – sometimes we were going forward in time and sometimes backwards! What we did glean was that a lot of killing went on!

The main claim to fame was that Henry VII – the first Tudor king – was born there.  I had not appreciated that the Tudors were essentially Welsh in origin. Somehow although Tudors are studied endlessly at school, this fact is not to the fore!  Not every area was open but we were able to wander along the ramparts and up and down towers and learnt a lot of Welsh history.

The rest of the day was spent in idleness, finding a solar panel system that might charge phones and cycle computers and thinking about possibilities for our next cycling trip (I know we are not through this one yet but we always like to have one on the horizon!)