Rhosson Ganol

All manner of weird and wonderful campsites are brought to your attention via Cool Camping, but we all need a little bit of normality in our lives and this includes campsites where us average bods, whether couples or families, can enjoy a standard camping holiday – after all not all of us are searching out the weird or eccentric.

This is where Rhosson Ganol rides to the rescue, and where there isn’t a yurt or a tipi to be seen. Neither are the owners on a campaign to save the planet, and there is absolutely nothing strange or uniquely different trying to sell the site to the camping punters. They (the Griffiths family – Henry, David and Kate) just want their guests to enjoy their holidays.

The wide and unspoilt view may very well be the strongest reason for falling in love with Rhosson Ganol, but there is something else here gnawing at the senses, and it could be that feeling of being in a place where there is nothing beyond. In effect this is the Welsh version of Land’s End, or John o’ Groats, with Rhosson Ganol being the westernmost campsite in Wales. All this can be felt in your bones, too, sitting outside the tent staring happily and vacantly out at the sea on a warm summer evening.

Right, enough notional nonsense, for this is a fantastically practical place to come for that normal camping holiday we promised. Before venturing too far from the site in search of things to see and do it is worth kicking off the explorations by strolling down to that rocky little cove at Porthstinian, where a few leisurely facts become clear. The first being that a walk along the coast path from here is eminently possible, with a bus service bringing walkers back to base at the end of the day.

There are also quite a number of boat trips running out of Porthstinian, offering a bewildering variety of aquatic adventures including contrasts such as a visit to the RSPB reserve on Ramsey Island, to an outrageously mad jet-boat session in the whirlpools and big, big waves that batter this coastline. Added to all this is the existence of a nice beach just half a mile away, the city (well, it’s a village really) of St Davids just over a mile, and the whole of west Pembrokeshire readily accessible from this small campsite, which teeters on the very edge and makes a normal kind of holiday something rather extraordinary.