Pen Dal-aderyn in Pembrokeshire, west of St Davids, is the westernmost point of mainland Wales. Its name means 'bird-catching head' in Welsh.
Pen Dal-aderyn ( SM 715 233 ) forms the bold, wave-cut extremity of the St Davids headland and is accepted by Ordnance Survey mapping as the westernmost point of the Welsh mainland. [1] Rising to roughly 26 m above Ramsey Sound, the headland lies 3 km south-west of St Davids and is skirted by both the Pembrokeshire Coast Path and a National Trust strip that links Porthlysgi Bay to Porthclais. [2] From the clifftop the view spans the Bishops and Clerks rocks, the tidal race of "the Bitches" and the serrated north cliffs of Ramsey Island a kilometre offshore. [3]
The promontory exposes the Treginnis Group of the late Precambrian Pebidian Volcanic Series—purplish keratophyric lavas and associated tuffs and agglomerates that dip gently south-east beneath younger Cambrian sandstones. [4] Small quartz-copper veins were trial-worked here in the nineteenth century; remnants of the Treginnis copper mine, including a part-infilled shaft just east of the point, are passed by walkers on the coast path. [5]
Recorded as Pen dal aderyn in 1843 and Trwyn Talderyn in 1840, the toponym probably fuses tâl 'end" with aderyn "bird", yielding a sense of "bird-headland"; a later folk reinterpretation connected dal with "to catch", giving rise to the literal modern translation "bird-catching head". [5] Today Pen Dal-aderyn is a waypoint for coastal kayakers negotiating Ramsey Sound's 6-knot tides and a favoured perch for cetacean-watchers scanning summer feeding lines that run between the mainland and Ramsey Island. [6]