Traeth Llyfn beach, Pembrokeshire: 'A beach so remote you’ll be the sole person on it'
The remote Traeth Llyfn beach is a Secret Britain spot accessible only by the adventurous.


On the wild Welsh coast overlooking St George’s Channel, Traeth Llyfn beach is so remote you’ll be the sole person on it.
It’s only accessible from the Pembrokeshire Coast Path, a little over half a mile’s walk from Abereiddi to the south or a little further from Porthgain, and, because the beach sits in a secluded crook of soaring slate and shale cliffs, access is tricky.
You’ll need to descend via a small staircase set into the cliff edge, said to have been built by Italian prisoners-of-war, but beware — the steps are cut off at high tide and the undercurrent is strong.
The Blue Lagoon of Abereiddi is worth a visit, too, a sea-flooded old slate quarry that’s now a popular diving spot.
See more of Secret Britain
Carn Euny, Cornwall: The baffling ruin with a tunnel dating back to the Iron Age
Annie Elwes investigates the ruins of Carn Euny.
Grey Mare’s Tail waterfall, Dumfriesshire: 'Mesmerising even to the peregrine falcons that nest in the crags around'
Annie Elwes recommends the waterfall and surrounding wild countryside of the Grey Mare's Tail Nature Reserve.
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Annunciata grew up in the wilds of Lancashire and now lives in Hampshire with a husband, two daughters and an awful pug called Parsley. She’s been floating round the Country Life office for more than a decade, her work winning the Property Magazine of the Year Award in 2022 (Property Press Awards). Before that, she had a two-year stint writing ‘all kinds of fiction’ for The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, worked in internal comms for Country Life’s publisher (which has had many names in recent years but was then called IPC Media), and spent another year researching for a historical biographer, whose then primary focus was Graham Greene and John Henry Newman and whose filing system was a collection of wardrobes and chests of drawers filled with torn scraps of paper. During this time, she regularly gave tours of 17th-century Milton Manor, Oxfordshire, which may or may not have been designed by Inigo Jones, and co-founded a literary, art and music festival, at which Johnny Flynn headlined. When not writing and editing for Country Life, Annunciata is also a director of TIN MAN ART, a contemporary art gallery founded in 2021 by her husband, James Elwes.
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