Step back in time at Castell Henllys to the Iron Age. Cooper’s been keen to visit here again since studying Pembrokeshire landmarks in school - so today was as good a day as any!
What do I need to know?
Castell Henllys isn’t a full day out, but that’s reflected in the reasonable entry price! £6.50 for adults and £4.50 for children. You can take your dog here too by the way! There’s a lovely cafe at the entrance and you can eat here even if you’re not planning on going into the attraction itself. The food is REALLY lovely in the cafe, all homemade and big portions. The cakes are amazing too!
If you don’t want to eat out there are lots of picnic benches around the site for you to perch and eat. We went on a boiling day and there were plenty of places to find shade.
You CAN take a pram there and a wheelchair, the terrain is accessible enough, but the pull up to the top of the hill where the Iron Age houses are is steep! I’m pretty sure however that I saw some mobility scooters that you could hire or indeed I think I overhead someone being offered a lift up by a member of staff - so don’t let that put you off. Once you’re at the top it’s pretty flat then.
There are toilets at the entrance but nothing once you’ve made it to the top - so make sure you sort yourself out before trekking up and then realising you need a pee!
What can you do there?
The first thing that we did when we arrived was some seed bombs that we got to take home with us, which are now in the garden probably never going to grow as I am literally the WORST gardener in the world! But you never know!!
There’s a small park right at the entrance which is a great spot for a picnic as there’s plenty of benches there.
A little further along you come to a path where they encourage you to take your shoes off and experience life on foot before the days of trainers and flip flops! For anyone who knows my child, we did not accept this particular invitation and kept the shoes on!
At the end of the path there’s some steps down to the river to wash your feet - or, in our case, stop for some shade and some stone throwing!
Then for the big climb up! It’s no far or long, but steep! Cooper managed it without too much moaning so that should give you a good indication at how doable it is! It was made a little longer by him stopping and asking me if every leaf and stone we passed was around years ago!!
There seems to be some animal pens when you reach the top and I’m sure I’ve seen animals there before, but I’m guessing they were in and hiding in shade today as it was a particularly hot day!
Once in the Iron Age village there are 5 huts/houses you can go into with something a little different to see/do in each one. You learn about the different weapons and tools used to survive, Coops got to make a candle out of beeswax and there was a lady there showing how to weave wool. I saw a lot of children walking around with blue tribal face paint - but we must have missed this (not that Coops would have wanted it anyway - he’s never been a fan of face painting or getting dirty!!)
So, all in all, we were probably there for about two hours, but you could definitely stretch it out to half a day if you had a picnic or went with some friends - there’s plenty of safe open space to run about and explore!
We actually bought a season pass as it allows you to visit Carew Castle as well and that’s right by our caravan really, so will probably get use out of it over the summer.
So, if you’re looking for a nice walk with a bit of history in the mix, I’m sure you’d enjoy a few hours in Castell Henllys! Don’t forget that you’re really close to Newport, Parrog here too, which we love to visit! (There’s a blog post on that if you scroll back on the homepage a bit!)
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