Letter from Tenby; Dinbych-y-pysgod (Little Fort of the Fish)

Julie Brominicks

I get up in the dark to keep an eye on the boats. ‘I often think about being out there’ Dan from Greggs says, making coffee. ‘Far away from land with only the birds. How quiet it would be.’

The limestone promontory under Dinbych-y-pysgod was not always coastal. Elephant, bison and hyena bones found in its caves recall a higher, drier time.

But the flat we stayed in overlooked the harbour. It was always going to be about the fish.

Lobster pots

Saturday when the sea was green, a fisherman moved lobster pots up the slipway. Sunday the sea was black and white like so much Guinness. Halyards were fretting and the sky was stained red.

The wind forced me right back up South Parade even though in town centre the scaffolders still whistled on their rigging. These sheltering buildings and streets and medieval fortifications seem like an extrusion of the lacerated limestone beneath.

‘It’s under three foot of sand!’ the bin-men said of the carpark. ‘The cricket pitch is flooded. I was literally being smacked in the face by leaves!’ say Sam and Tara, who swam across the harbour instead of North Beach.

After the storm the hanging baskets look like vegetables left overlong in the fridge.

The fishermen are fugitive. Lowry figures putting out to an indefinable sea. Footprints and wet keel stripe on the slipway. One day, a man in yellow wellies slips out of Greggs with an armful of sausage rolls.

I like the hi-viz hours. Bin-men and delivery men. Portuguese builders from London. One morning I follow a svelte fox down steps cut into the cliff and at the bottom find a man called Steven line-fishing in the dark, listening to Heart Radio.

In Greggs, may-flies dance under the light and Dan keeps the sausage rolls stocked.

Joe readying his dinghies. Photo Julie BrominicksKorean exports

On the harbour I bump into Beryl (a liturgist I met on Ynys Enlli) waiting for the mail-boat to Caldey. A whole National Grid team are going over for maintenance. And Joe who works for a company contracted by Qinetiq for MOD, is readying dinghies.

Safe

‘Pendine is firing every day so we’re just making sure everything is safe.

‘And they fly drones from Manorbier so we pick them up if any land in the sea.’ He tells me about the whelk lorry in Saundersfoot.

‘Y cwmni yw basically based yn Llangrannog’ says Aled the haulier who waits for the catamarans there with a winch for the whelks he drives to the fish factory in Ceinewydd from where they’re exported to Korea. ‘There’s no demand in Cymru’ he explains.

‘There’s dogfish in that bag. Crab in that one. They use it for bait. They crack the body and put it in the pot.

‘But if you leave it too long it gives off a death smell and they don’t come. So you’ve got to work them every day if you can.’

In the museum we read how 30,000 oysters a day were exported to Bristol and Liverpool till, like herrings, continual exploitation of stocks ended the industry.

In the Simply Seafoods shack, Sarah and Cara sell lobster, crab, and seabass, mackerel and bream caught on a line by Richard.

Cara is weighing a lobster that is black and speckled like her jumper, and trying to walk off the scale, despite bound claws.

Richard’s boat criss-crosses the bay to the keeps where he and Keiron are putting down lobsters. The mono-hull is rocking so much I often can’t see the men. Here they come now.

Kieron taught sixth-formers at Legoland and worked as a chef, before covering for his brother one day and fell right in love with fishing, you can tell from his smile.

‘It’s a bit scary when the weather’s like this and you’re on the punt and you find you’re shaking but when you’re working it doesn’t really click in your head.’

Richard’s eyes shift to the sea. Everything’s getting harder. Costs have doubled but not takings. ‘Lobster’s stayed the same for years and we’re getting less for the crabs. That’s why we try and keep it local.’ He supplies restaurants as well as Simply Seafood. ‘It’s getting complicated. That’s what’s finishing off some of the old fishermen now. Red tape.’

Overfishing

Crayfish got fished out in the seventies but are starting to come back. Is Richard ever worried about stocks? He looks how people do when you’ve hit on a worry. ‘Everyone’s overfishing. We all are. That one out there’s got 2000 pots. They’ve got to because of the fuel bills and insurance.’

In the next few days they’ll have to turn the pots over before the tail end of the hurricane comes in. And the warming seas? ‘When the water’s warm in summer the lobsters moult but that season seems to be lasting longer. They harden up over winter. It used to be October. It’s more like Christmas now when that happens.’

In the Greggs queue, Gaz introduces me to young Keynon. They’re going out to Lundy. (I’ll see them return twelve hours later; thirteen when they’ve finished hosing and are jumping into the punt with smokes and a Red Bull.)

Gaz thanks the girl so sincerely for his coffee before shouldering his holdall and wishes me well with such timeless courtesy I am properly moved.

I admire fishermen even more now I’ve met them.

Steven’s down the steps with his rod and Heart Radio. ‘Hello sweetheart. Wind’s a bit keener today.’ The horizon is choppy like grass tufts in a field.

The rising sun is sprinkling the little black waves with gold lights so they look like villages on hills. ‘I’ve had five bass. I’ve put ‘em all back because they’re all small.

They’ve got to be sixteen inches to keep.’ High tide. The waves are sliding down the cliff like prosecco. I can’t seem to move.

So we both sit there listening to Heart Radio ballads, smiling at the sun. And I’m thinking about the seabass swimming in the caves beneath Little Fort of the Fish.