Saturday — Crossing to Pembrokeshire, Wales

We had a wonderful breakfast at Archways B&B. Chris raises a few pigs and makes his own sausages; they are delicious. We left at 7:45 to drive the few miles to check in our for our 8:45 ferry from Rosslare to Pembroke on the Isle of Inishmore of Irish Ferries. It takes just about four hours. It was overcast but the seas were calm as could be. I stocked up on duty-free vodka for our final week at a cottage in Wales.

Getting off the ferry, we looked for a pub and a grocery store in the town, Pembroke Docks, near where the ferry docks.  Bad idea. The pub was filled with rowdies, and we ended up eating at a McDonalds filled with annoying little fat kids and their oblivious parents. And the Tesco where we did our shopping was packed. The whole experience gave us a bad first impression of the area in which we were going to be living for a week.

Then things got better quickly. We crossed the toll bridge (75 pence) to the other side of the channel and quickly found a nice pub called Martha’s Vineyard (named after the Massachusetts island) near the harbor in Milford Haven, an area decidedly upscale area from Pembroke Docks. The bartender was entertaining and gave us some good tips for restaurants. Then we headed for Kiln House, our self-catering home for the next seven nights. It’s a glorious place right on the water. The pictures tell most of the story. Not shown are the third bedroom, the second full bath, the downstairs half bath, the laundry room with washer and dryer, the back yard parking spot, and a second grassed patio.  We could live here!  (Oh, and there’s a nice neighborhood pub juts 200 yards down the road on the sea.)  Elaine prepared dinner at home and we had an early night.