Explore
Coasteering!
What is it? It’s THE best thing you can do in (and on) the sea. It’s a unique opportunity to go to rarely visited corners of the coast with an expert guide. It’s an adaptable activity that can be pretty adventurous or really quite mellow (that’s mostly up to you).
Coasteering is our speciality, our favourite activity and between us we have thousands of coasteers under our belts. We still want more!
Our coasteering routes are amazing – we really think they’re some of the best in the world. They’re full of jumps (optional, but EPIC!), swim-throughs, spectacular caves, surfy play spots and hidden gems discovered during decades of exploration by our guides. You’ll see sponges, seaweeds, spider crabs and more. It’s not uncommon for us to be visited by a curious seal.
Coasteering is our Original Activity and our guides are exceptionally experienced and trained to the highest levels. You’ll find no better cliff-ninjas/seaweed-geeks/ crab-wranglers/maestros of fun to keep you safe during this fantastic adventure.
Minimum age: 8 years old
Coasteering kayaking activities Tenby
A unique
sea-based adventure!
Legend has it coasteering was invented by mountaineers to train for the big peaks…. That may be true but it was Pembrokeshire surfers who found their way along gnarly bits of coastline for fun and then introduced coasteering to the world. Whilst exploring caves, looking for stuff to jump off and getting swirled around by swells they realised two things:
a) coasteering is AMAZING
and
b) everyone should do it
TYF in St David’s first offered coasteering as an activity and you can now coasteer all over the world. But Pembrokeshire will always be the birthplace and arguably the best place to coasteer.
Coasteering Tenby
FAQ's
Coast-earring, Cow-Steering, Coaster ring, Coast-a-teering… There is often confusion around this thing we do.
Coasteering. What is it? It’s a lot of things. It’s wild-swimming and rock-scrambling. It’s exploring nooks and crannies, caves and pools. It’s playing around with swell and jumping into deep water. It’s meeting seals, eating seaweed and having a chat with a crab.
Primarily it’s an adventure activity that takes place along a stretch of coastline, mostly within the ‘inter-tidal zone’ – the bit between the high and low tide lines.
The jumping… it’s often seen as THE main part of coasteering and it’s definitely a part of it. BUT, jumping is just one topping on the epic coasteering pizza (maybe the olives). You can come on a session with us and – if you like – not jump at all! Leaping from a safe rocky platform into clear, blue water is awesome, we gently suggest everyone gives it a go. But don’t worry if it’s not your bag – there’s WAY more to coasteering than the airtime!
In short – not very! But it’s important you have a properly trained and sufficiently experienced guide. Our guides are not only extremely experienced but also subject to continuous training and assessment before, during and after the coasteering season. Throughout a coasteer they’ll be constantly monitoring the conditions and the well-being of you and your fellow coasteerers.
Whilst coasteering is an adventure activity and therefore one that involves a degree of risk, we go to great lengths to manage and control risk factors, keep them at low-levels and keep you as safe as possible.
We’re members of the National Coasteering Charter – an organisation set up to establish and maintain the highest standards amongst coasteering providers.
Our half-day sessions involve being in the water for between 2 and 2.5 hours. We’ve found that’s about right for 99% of people!
We do offer special extended ‘Beast-steer’ sessions at certain times of year that cover more ground for much longer – give us a call if you think you’re up to the challenge but bear in mind we have broken athletes and left Iron Men on their kness on our Beast Sessions…
Most important – footwear. Trainers are the absolute best thing to wear coasteering – they’ve got good grip, thick soles and are secure on the foot. Wetsuit boots are ok (you want a decent sole though) and beach-shoes/reef-shoes can be adequate IF they’re secure. You really, really don’t want to lose a shoe mid-coasteer.
We also ask everyone to bring a pair of shorts to wear OVER their wetsuit. This serves two purposes – you look great (ish) but mostly you get a bit of padding and your wetsuit gets a bit of protection.
Bring a towel and some warm clothes to change back into in the colder parts of the year. A changing robe is a great idea as we coasteer at places without changing facilities more often than not.
Firstly – rain does NOT matter! Bring a coat for getting changed – some of our meeting points are cliff-top carparks with no changing rooms, showers, hot-tubs…. It’s the price we pay for going to amazing places!
Sometimes strong winds from certain directions and unusually large swells can cause us to move or postpone a coasteer. We can usually fall back to one of our more protected routes but occasionally that’s not possible. If your session is rescheduled and you can’t make it, or cancelled – you will be refunded in full. This doesn’t happen often during the summer.
We don’t as a rule take photos simply because our guides need to focus entirely on keeping you safe and happy.
If you have a GoPro or action cam (that’s waterproof to at least 5m) it’s no problem if you’d like to bring it along. Helmet mounts don’t really work but if you have a floaty handle or a lanyard that can be safely attached that’s all good.
