Manorbier (Maenorbŷr) is a small village five miles south-west of Tenby, where a Norman castle sits on a ridge above a sandy bay. It is a simple, perfect combination: castle, beach, church and pub in a few hundred yards, with the coast path running past all of them.
Gerald of Wales, the twelfth-century churchman and writer, was born in the castle and called Manorbier "the pleasantest place in Wales". He was biased, but not by much. Virginia Woolf stayed here alone in August 1908, working on her first novel.
Above the village is the Grade I listed St James's Church, and on the headland south of the beach is King's Quoit, a Neolithic burial chamber. East along the coast is Lydstep, with sea caves under its limestone cliffs. The Ministry of Defence uses the old wartime airfield west of the village as a missile testing range.
Manorbier has a request-stop station a mile north on the Tenby–Pembroke Dock line, and the Tenby–Pembroke bus passes through.