What to Do on a Rainy Day at Waterwynch House, Pembrokeshire

There's a version of a Pembrokeshire holiday where the weather is perfect every day: clear skies, warm sand, golden light on the bay. It happens, more often than you might expect. But the west Wales coast has weather of its own, and a day of rain at Waterwynch is not the setback it might be elsewhere.

The house, it turns out, was made for days like this.

The Sky Room is where most people end up first. Glass-roofed and sea-facing, it watches the weather roll in across Carmarthen Bay in a way that is more dramatic than disappointing. The grand piano sits quietly in the corner, and the 100-inch screen with surround sound means the room can shift from panoramic lounge to cinema without anyone having to move very far.

The billiard room tends to become the centre of the afternoon. Someone starts a game on the original 1920s table that becomes unexpectedly competitive, someone else opens a bottle from the bar, children drift between rooms, and plans to go out later quietly disappear. There is a dartboard, a well-stocked board game cabinet, karaoke in the bar for when the evening picks up, and a cinema room with blackout curtains for proper film nights. Mixed-age groups tend to find their own level across these spaces without much organisation: grandparents gravitating toward the quiz, teenagers toward the karaoke, younger children toward the arts room, and everyone reconvening when it matters.

For those who want something quieter, there is a library and reading area in the Great Hall, an arts and crafts room stocked for all ages, and a therapy room where treatments can be arranged with local therapists. The music room has guitars on the wall, a drum kit, a PA system and amplifiers: enough to get something going, however long ago you last played.

In the kitchen, rainy days have a different rhythm. The large island and espresso machine invite a slower kind of morning, a longer lunch, a group effort at dinner. The separate catering kitchen, fully equipped for serious cooking, has a way of bringing out unexpected ambition in people. More than one group has turned it into an informal cooking competition, which is either chaotic or brilliant depending on who you ask, and occasionally both.

Outside, if you feel like it, the rain rarely stops a walk for long. The cliff path above the house gives views back across the bay that are at their most dramatic in changeable weather. But there is no obligation.

At some point in the afternoon, when the rain is properly in and the waves are audible from wherever you've settled, the house earns its keep in a different way. There is something particular about being warm inside a place like this while the weather does what it wants outside. It makes the bar feel more necessary, the fire of conversation burn a little longer, the decision to stay another night rather easier than it should be.

One family arrived worried the rain would cost them at least part of the weekend. Instead it unfolded in ways they hadn't quite expected. The morning started slowly: coffee around the kitchen island, someone starting breakfast, children appearing one by one. By late morning the arts room had been claimed, grandparents supervising a project that began with pebble painting and expanded into family portraits of varying accuracy. Elsewhere, a billiards tournament had become unexpectedly competitive.

After lunch, the house filled in different ways. A few settled into the cinema room. Some of the older guests found a quieter corner of the Sky Room with a different programme and no particular plan to move. Two teenagers spent most of the afternoon in the music room working their way through the guitars and drums. Others searched out the Great Hall with books and tea.

By evening everyone had drifted back together. The bar filled, cocktails were made, and dinner stretched late into the night.

It is one of the things guests often discover at Waterwynch: the house works just as well in stormy weather as it does in sunshine.