Pembroke is a place of salvation. Rock, coast, birds. Little else. If you're looking for peace or perspective or connection or meaning, bring your lonesome, wild soul here.

St Govan's Chapel

The coach-loads come on pilgrimage

Folks needing a blessing take the slippery steps

To the tiny, stone shack. Wrong shoes

No waterproofs. Huddle on the gloomy, puddling flags

Briefly contemplate a life of devotion, take selfies

Retreat, stand in line and eat Pembrokeshire ice-cream

In July the road to the Chapel was closed

For Charles, Prince of Wales, to play the tourist

Just a few months before being appointed King

The sting of English royalty in a Celtic hermitage

But you don't stay in power without instinct

Wise, with divine right, to pay God a visit

Elegug Stacks

My friends have gathered here

Like birds

Flocking from the cities, Cardiff, Bristol

And nesting

Fifty yards from the Green Bridge car park

Stand with others

Gawking at Elegug Stacks

The white mess

And noise and joy of the colony

I tried to move here once. Settle

But my roof leaked, the sale fell through

Maybe it's for the best

In time, hop back to the van

Alone and muse on

The nature of migration which means home

Is a moveable feast

Ye Olde Worlde Café (Bosherston)

Queen Elizabeth the Second in gold

Frames on the dim walls. Charles and Diana

Eternally wed on twee plates and bowls

Cherished monarchist memorabilia

Ma Weston (Aunty Vi) M.B.E. ruled

Each table and customer. Her empire

Staffed by short-skirted, local, teenage girls

A grassy garden, green hut, front parlour

God forbid - don't ask for bacon! Poached eggs

Beans or cheese. White sliced. Take it or leave it!

Tray-baked yellow sponge, cherry-topped, in squares

Hunched, astute, til her eighties Ma carried

China pots of the strongest loose-leaf tea

When she died, was treated like royalty

Military Ordnance

Collect heavy casing segments

Of exploded ordnance

On the hike back from Battleship

Interlockable sections. Gorgeous, metallic turquoise

Tight-fitting jackets that wrapped the shells

Henry spots them, I fetch, Paul carries

Lashed to his pack with compression

Straps designed for ice axes

Explains that he's making a sculpture

A dangling mobile. Perhaps a weather vane

Pure habit to clutch a handful of bullets

Chat about routes passing regular signs

"KEEP OUT MILITARY FIRING RANGE"

And the yellow one below it: "DO NOT TOUCH ANY

MILITARY DEBRIS IT MAY EXPLODE AND KILL YOU"

March the tinder track across a flat, grass top

Turf slashed raw by gunfire

Abandoned camo trucks

Headlands identifiable by concrete

Bunkers spiky with radar dishes and masts

Finally, exit to the civvy carpark

By the cuboid checkpoint unit. Unoccupied today

No red flag flying

Just a comfortable wingback armchair

Situated to look the other way

 

* Note: Do not touch any military debris. It may explode and kill you *

Part Atoms, Part Song (Tactician, St Govan's)

An in-between place. Part nowhere, part safe

Limbs splayed, feet notched into notches in the rock

Part human, part lichen. Spine to the cliff

Gazing out, resting. Seal in the swell. Tilts

His head. Will I play? Sports whiskers and fins

Part old man, part fish. I wave de-pumping arms

In a jolly, silly greeting. A wind-up trifle

Part clockwork, part flesh

The ocean an empty after-hours hall

Vast and dream-like. Liquid parquet. Twilight falls

And the sun casts glitter on the dance floor

Water a ballroom - part atoms, part song

On the horizon, Lundy island. Determine to write

To my old school-friend. Request her company

There, climbing, for my fiftieth, granite, birthday

Part crystal, part stone

A chill. The seal gone. Fingers back to half-strength

Twirl to the groove - bridge then layback - rapid switch

Brutal tussle over the crux - part wrestle, part waltz

Quick! Foot to a niche. Get in balance! Breathe

Touch the rock, skin-temperature, nylon hair

Place gear, metalware, jewellery on the face

She sparkles, crumbling, planning her escape

Part woman, part landscape

 

Two Swans                                                          

A racket caught my attention at once

The way a duff exhaust pipe

Or snagged bike frame

Make you look up

Two swans

Creaking the length of Western Cleddau

Between Haverfordwest

And Little Haven

Other birds seem made of feathers

Floating stealth of an owl

Flutter of sparrows

But swans are fashioned of grating metal

We all know their beginnings

Ugly ducklings

How they fabricate themselves

From what they can get

Bodge adulthood out of scrap

Compressors, spark plugs, rusty springs

No wonder they squeak and grind

But nevertheless - they fly

I saw them. Crouched in the old woods

Watched them wing the channel

Dead-centre, noisily

Past where the jays hid

Past where buzzards

Were pestered by crows

The two swans kept on to Hook Bight

Banked the ninety degree bend

And continued along the Reach

Didn't skimp the corner or skip the meander

To save time or short-cut to success

Or happiness or to their destination

Followed the path of the water

With its ups and downs and floods and mud

Cranky and honky and flappy and shameless

All the way along the estuary

Simon's Field

Simon's Field the favoured spot

Three quid a night

Portaloo with ceramic bog

Sheepdogs on the quad

Right next to the old ground, also cheap

Where the owners sold bread and bacon and milk

And tended campers

The way they grew flowers

Before that, Vicar's Field on the far boundary

One tap as sole facility

Long grass, never mown

A pound, or whatever. Climbers only

And in the distant past

Stories of bedding down in the church porch

In Bosherston village

A wooden bench at zero cost

Shaggy Dog Stories (Bosherston Head)

Grope through black constrictions and bottomless squeezes

Pushing and panting

Undulating limestone and sodden walls in preposterous darkness

Scrabble towards the glow from a blowhole which you know rips

Ghastly and gaping

A gash in the green sheet of grass high above

No surgeon's knife to slice me out nor the forceps of a gale

Grappling and groaning

Labouring within the maternal rock

Claw my way up, off-route, no head torch, we'd been naïve

Laughing and lazing

In the brightness of the summertime cliff top sward

Struggling to breathe, heartbeat pumping, full-body-back-and-footing

Slipping and sliding

In this unpretty effort to be born

Turn the roof - a circle of light! a ramp! - last lurch forward

Gasping and grunting

Hauling the slimy umbilical cord

Remember, Remember

Do you remember August Bank Holiday at the Inn

Birthday girl and boy jostling naked to the bar?

Games of pool, last orders for cawl, half and half

Chips and rice. Pints. Rowdiness. Photos of rock-jocks

Murals of Lily Ponds, Elegug Stacks, Church Rock

Black bull's head. Climbing the only talk

You must remember the jagged starts. Tent-stiff, damp

Breakfast a chill wodge in the gut. Adrenaline

Thwarting digestion. Route curdling from legend to guidebook

To this day's project. Racking up and abseiling in

Waves heckling with jeers, spume in gobs

As you do it anyway. Try your hardest. Pull out all the stops

Remember, remember before Zodiac fell down?

When the arch at Crocksydam was shaped like a heart?

Before the seaward leg of the Green Bridge half-collapsed? 

The sudden clattering. Frightening, loose top-outs

We all remember the ones who didn't make it

Karabiner with your name on. Watch out for helicopters

It is important to remember eating and sleeping

And family and earning some sort of living

The weekly shop. Taking kids to school. Paying tax

Giving up smoking. But something special happened

In Pembroke. Remember? The savage, bloody

Thrill of it all and all because of the rock

Rosary

A rosary in walking

The same locations over and over

Different seasons, decades, weathers

This wooden stile

Its idiosyncratic latch

I know how it works

The gorse patch burnt a while back

Twisted wood, black-tasselled-with-green

Where stonechats tap-tap-tap

The path a strand of worn out string

Connecting Chapel Point, Bosherston

Stennis Ford, Huntsmans Leap

Skip through the beads, snap-snap-snap

Then on towards the cattle grid

Follow the twine of the track

Past Saddle Head, Rusty Walls

The Castle, Mewsford

These places and names

Smooth with my touch

Warm with the clasp of my hands

Rounded by years of adoration

Murmur on towards Bullslaughter Bay

To stoop through arches

A solo ritual. Pray

For my climbing partner to come back

Feet mutter over the gravel

Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack

The Twelve Days of Pembroke

On the last day of the trip

My partner said to me

Twelve o'clock low tide

Elevenses in our stomachs

Ten minutes of walking

Nine rusting bullets

Eight hours of sunshine

Seven layers of clothing

Six sheep a-grazing

New Camalot five!

Four wobbly stakes

Three hundred million years of limestone

Two red flower pots

And the choughs nesting looking out to sea

Thanks to Emma Alsford and Paul Donnithorne for fact checking.