There is a spring-like feeling in the crisp morning air as we drive leisurely along the Ridgeway road, bound westward ho! to 'fresh woods and pastures new.'
Fairy cobwebs, gemmed with glistening dewdrops, sparkle in every hedgerow as we mount slowly up the steep, ruddy flank of the Ridgeway. Bowling merrily along the smooth, well-kept road that traverses its breezy summit, we are in all probability following the course of some primitive trackway, used from the earliest times when enemies lurked in the lowlands.
Ever wider grows the outlook as we jaunt along; the glory of the scene culminating as we clamber up the last of these steep 'pinches,' and call a halt, near a farm called the Rising Sun, to scan the summer landscape spread around.
Close at hand broad meadows, green with the promise of spring, spread away down a winding valley tufted with shadowy woodlands, whence gray old steeples peep above the clustering cottage roofs. Far away amidst the folding hills, the walls and towers of lordly Carew rise near a silvery sheet of water—an arm of Milford Haven—backed by leagues of unexplored country, o'ertopped by the faint blue line of the Precelly Mountains—a glorious scene indeed!
'Ah! world unknown! how charming is thy view,
Thy Pleasures many, and each pleasure new!'
Turning across the lane, we lean upon a neighbouring gate, and leisurely scan the fair prospect over land and sea. Yonder the snow-white cottages gleam amidst the ruddy ploughlands. Seawards, the gorse-clad downs plunge in warm red sandstone cliffs to the all-encircling ocean, that stretches in unbroken span from St. Govan's Head, past Caldey Isle, to the gray-blue line of distant Devon, with Lundy lying under its lee.
Forward again, betwixt pleasant greenswards tangled with fragrant gorse, brambles and unfurling bracken, within whose cool retreats the yellow-hammer lurks in his new spring bravery; while smart little goldfinches hunt in pairs amidst the thistle-heads under the hedgerow.
Gradually we slant away downwards, passing an ancient tumulus whence, in the old war times, a beacon fire gave warning against threatened invasion; and catching glimpses ahead of ruined towers and curtain-walls, where time-honoured old Pembroke nods over its memories of 'the days that are no more.' Soon we are clattering through the diminutive village of Lamphey. Here we dismiss our driver, and, turning across park-like meadows where cattle are grazing under the broad-limbed oaks, we soon descry the ivy-mantled ruins of Lamphey Palace.