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I am lying in a hot bath filled with seaweed. After a week learning about the stuff, collecting it, drying it, eating it, feeling it slippery beneath my feet, this is the first time I’ve bathed in seaweed and, yes, in the steam and candlelight, I get it – I get what the fish are crazy for. The fish, the crabs and, I’m learning, soon everybody else.
The weather in Pembrokeshire while we’re there is often what coastal forager Craig Evans called, as he cheerfully stomped ahead of me earlier that day across a beach in whipping wind, “liquid sunshine”. We arrived on a Monday, checking into a lodge at the Bluestone resort in the afternoon and taking delivery of a perfect dinner by chef Ben Gobbi, whose menus rely on local produce and a sprinkling of seaweed. Bluestone’s head of corporate responsibility explains that one of the main differences between this place and similar resorts is that they are typically dropped into the middle of a forest, while this one built a forest around itself, planting thousands of trees (using seaweed as fertiliser), and doing things like offering nappy recycling to families, later using the recycled product to build their roads. Another difference is that while other resorts want to lock their guests in, here they encourage everybody to go and explore Pembrokeshire, which is lucky, as I have plans.
I’ve brought my family here to explore the “seaweed revolution”. A happy combination of increased environmental awareness and more people seeking vegan alternatives has taken seaweed mainstream. It’s estimated that the industry in Europe will be worth €30bn by 2030, with seaweed already used for food, plastic alternatives, biofuel, fertiliser and cosmetics. In Asia, it’s always been a dietary staple, but in Welsh cuisine (despite the earliest written record of seaweed eaten here dating from the 12th century), it’s lost favour in recent years.
A new collection of chefs and farmers has started to change that. I meet Jonathan Williams the next morning in driving rain at the Freshwater West Beach seaweed hut. A tent-like building that juts bravely into the horizon. This is the last survivor of a group of about 20 that were used to dry seaweed in the early 20th century, and it was this hut that first inspired Williams (the founder of the Pembrokeshire Beach Food Company and the solar-powered seaweed boat kitchen, Cafe Môr) to rediscover a taste for seaweed. Laver seaweed has been eaten in Wales since at least the 17th century.
This is how you prepare it: first, you collect it, then you wash it well and boil it for simply ages until it becomes a soft purée called laverbread, which tastes slightly olive-ish. After that, you can use it to add depth and flavour (and impressive amounts of protein) to almost anything. Williams invites us to his bustling pub, the Old Point House in Angle, overlooking the sea, to try the laverbread recipes he’s created. We eat seaweed-pesto focaccia, seaweed lemon cake, oysters and lobster and chips and it is all insanely delicious, with that umami depth of flavour.
The following day, the sun high, we arrive at Câr-Y-Môr in St David’s unsure of what to expect of an ocean farm. My children had suspected small pens of oysters, and prawns galloping through the field – in fact, we were met with a polytunnel of drying seaweed, which we walked through in wonder. Here, they’re committed to improving the coastal environment while also improving the wellbeing of the local community (the farm is community-owned); part of the way they do this is by growing about 50 tonnes of seaweed a year to sell as food and fertiliser. Down in the sea, 300m of lines grow seaweed and oysters, as well as scallops and mussels, vertical underwater gardens that also regenerate marine ecosystems.
We tried their dried sea spaghetti (nutty), dulse (bacony) and kombu (smoky), before going down the road for lunch at the Really Wild Emporium – on the top floor are chic guest rooms, on the middle floor a shop selling handmade gifts like marigold and seaweed soap, and on the ground floor the restaurant, famous locally for its cakes. Today on the menu there’s a seaweed brownie and oat slice with sugar kelp. In the afternoon we lurch down to a hidden beach and explore the Pembrokeshire Coast national park, the only national park that exists mainly due to its coastline. In the north are craggy volcanic outcrops, in the south, towering limestone cliffs, pitted all along with bays and coves, and miles of golden sand.
When I wake early to gale force winds, I message Craig Evans to see if we need to cancel our foraging trip. He seems confused (cancel because of weather? Pardon?) and by 7.30am he is driving me through the rain to Wiseman’s Bridge. His golden retriever, Llew, leads us into the woods to find edible flowers and wild garlic bulbs, then towards the beach for rock samphire, before we stamp our way across the sand in search of prawns.
Evans is excellent company as he dips in and out of rock pools in his T-shirt, the wind smacking us away from low tide. “When the tide is out,” he says, “the table’s set!” In the shelter of some rocks, he lights what he calls a Solva stove – a log that has been vertically cut and doused in lighter fluid before being set on fire – and chops our foraged garlic and samphire into a pan with some butter, before adding cockles, prawns, razor clams and the flowers, rosehips, petals, willow herb and guelder rose berries.
Evans is quietly becoming famous for his foraging expertise but, he says, “All I’m doing is reminding people what everyone used to know.”
Back at Bluestone, I strip off smoke-wet clothes, settle into the spa’s seaweed bath, and imagine myself being pleasantly boiled. That night my family eat oysters and lobster rolls at the gorgeous Lan y Môr in Saundersfoot. By this point, my children are carrying small bags of dried seaweed to sprinkle on their chips and pointing out anything that contains seaweed. Toothpaste! Ice-cream! The restaurant overlooks Coppet Hall beach, and we go down to the sand to watch our last Pembrokeshire sunset.
A week and many miles from the Welsh sea, I sit down for lunch at Mountain, Tomos Parry’s Michelin-starred restaurant in London. The setting could not be more distant than Saundersfoot Bay for a dish of Pembrokeshire cockles with laverbread, or Mountain’s famous spider crab omelette with Câr-Y-Môr sea kelp – famous actors flit between tables, Soho glamours behind us – but the feeling when eating them is the same as on the beach – a sense of connection, of history, of the dark and delicious power of the sea.
A six-bed platinum lodge on the Bluestone National Park Resort starts at £600 based on a four-night break (Mon-Fri) (bluestonewales.com). The coastal foraging trip is £85pp (coastalforaging.co.uk). For more information on visiting the area, go to visitpembrokeshire.com