Port Eynon
Roads that feel as if they lead exhilaratingly to the edge of the known world might be termed ‘peninsular thrills’, and the one leading down to Port Eynon is no exception. You are in deep Gower here, and even when the place is bustling with visitors in high summer, it will probably feel agreeably faraway from everywhere else.

Two villages face one another from opposite ends of Port-Eynon Bay: quiet Horton and the more brash Port Eynon, with its cluster of seafood restaurants and tea and chip shops. There is less sand and more bare, exposed rock here than on other well-known Gower beaches, and local people argue passionately that this is the recent result of over-dredging for sand out in the Bristol Channel. That said, it is a pleasant and accessible beach with convenient facilities, backed by dunes and sheltered by a headland, with all kinds of marine life and sea birds.

Port Eynon was a thriving village of oyster fishermen, mariners and quarry men in the 19th century. The 12th-century church of St Cattwg was renovated at that time but retains its Norman doorway and has a stoup for holy water in the porch, which is said to have been given by a Spanish sea captain in gratitude to his rescuers.