General

On the whole the path is quite obvious and can be walked in walking trainers or trail shoes. I won't necessarily advocate the wearing of shorts as there is quite a bit of undergrowth that you have to brush past at times and this can include nettles and gorse. There are people who maintain the path on a continuous basis and there is very often places where you can see the undergrowth at the sides has been recently strimmed.

Until near the end we hadn't realised that each gate/stile has a number, you can't see this on some of the older stiles but where a gate has been replaced then you can normally see a number. The numbers start at St. Dogmaels.

There are lots of ponies along the route that have been introduced to keep the vegetation down. They are not intimidating at all and you can walk right through the middle of them and they will barely acknowledge that you are there at all.

Cicerone Guide – we did all our planning and have been following the Cicerone Guide book but we felt it has a number of deficiencies –

·         We had an issue that was updated in 2008 but it still looks as though someone didn't re-walk the path to update it. They say it is 183 miles in length, the signs and marketing literature say 186 (the distance reckoner says 180!)

·         The description does not tally with the signs any more. Specific instances going though Pembroke Dock and Milford Haven.

·         Path signs cut off Martins Haven Point whereas the book goes round it.

·         It talks about going over numerous styles and now they are nearly all gates, in completing half of the path we must have gone over about 10 styles in the whole walk up to then.

·         The book doesn't really describe how easy or difficult a section is to walk.

·         There is nothing in it to say where there are any places to eat, shops to buy things from or toilets along the way.

·         There is nothing to state how much high gain there is on a section.

·         Also not so sure about the chapters/sections it is divided into some are very short and some are very long whereas we prefer to have fairly even sections and that means you start and stop though chapters.