A new website, Experience Pembrokeshire.com has been launched which focuses on the hidden depths of the county and provides a wealth of information for locals and visitors alike about places off the beaten track.
Funded with European money in a partnership project between PLANED (Pembrokeshire Local Action Network for Enterprise and Development) and Irish partners, to support sustainable rural tourism, it promotes the less well known treasures of the county.
In contrast to many websites, Experience Pembrokeshire.com concentrates on the unfamiliar.
Stories include those about where to find the site where the first transatlantic telegraph cable began and where the first flight from this country to Ireland took off in 1912 - a field in Goodwick!
There is also information about the Penrhos 'one night cottage' or 'Ty unnos', which means if a cottage was built overnight on common land, and a roof put on it and a fire lit before dawn, it could be claimed as a right. You can also find out about Landshipping's mining history and the story of the building of the Smalls lighthouse.
Experience Pembrokeshire.com also has information on local products and farmers markets, and the Welsh language.
The website is the result of the EU funded TWIGS project - Tourism Wales Ireland Green and Sustainable - which helped tourism businesses to complete training in 'Greening Your Business', Quality Management, and ICT.
The website features the tourism businesses who have completed this training.
Sarah Diment, from PLANED, said: "This has been an extremely successful project with 60 tourism related businesses trained and many of them have qualified for grants as a result of taking part. This website gives these businesses an opportunity to promote their environmental credentials."
The TWIGS initiative actively assists in the development and marketing of sustainable rural tourism in Ireland and Wales. The project is a partnership between Waterford Institute of Technology (Lead Partner), PLANED (Pembrokeshire Local Action Network for Enterprise and Development), SERTA Ireland (South East Regional Tourism Authority), and the LEADER groups of Carlow, Kilkenny (BNS), Tipperary, Waterford and Wexford.
The TWIGS project is a joint Wales/Ireland initiative funded by the ERDF under Interreg IIIA Community Initiative Programme 2000-2006 through the Welsh Assembly Government. The website was designed and developed by Mathry based company, Signum Media.