On a dark and drizzly day in St Davids - the smallest city in the least populated county in Britain - I'm on an unusual odyssey.
My mission? To find a bowl of leek soup for lunch.
St David is the patron saint of Wales, and this historic settlement - on arguably the most beautiful stretch of coastline in the British Isles - is named after the monastery he founded here in the 6th century.
What might have escaped your attention, however, is St David's association with the humble vegetable that has been the national emblem of the Welsh for 1500 years.
According to mythology, it was St David who ordered his defending army to identify themselves by wearing a leek on their helmets as they fought against the pagan Saxons thrusting westwards.
They didn't have to search far for the leeks: the chosen battleground was a field full of the green and white vegetables.
So a tradition was born. At the Battle of Crecy in 1346, Edward III's feared Welsh longbow archers apparently wore green and white as they destroyed the French army. Even today, Welsh guards outside Buckingham Palace wear a leek on their cap badges every March 1 - St David's Day.
As a child, I spent several holidays in Pembrokeshire - the Cornwall of Wales - because my Dad's brother, Uncle Aubrey, settled here with his Welsh wife, Aunty Betty. My first experience of lobster was watching a couple of them boil to death in a pan in Betty's kitchen. I was unable to eat lobster again until - well, at least my first cruise.
But, though I've been to Pembrokeshire many times since - usually camping, trekking or escaping - today's guide, Sarah Gerlach, has already told me so much I didn't know before.
Frankly, St David seems to have been a weirdo (though Gerlach prefers "austere").
Teetotal and vegetarian, the Welsh bishop insisted his monks drink only water and eat nothing but bread laced with salt and herbs. According to Gerlach, he would stand for hours, naked, up to his neck in the cold waters of the bay near his monastery to ward off the sins of the flesh (that will do it, most days).
After his death in AD589, his monastic community was vandalised many times by the Vikings. But St David's significance in the history of British Christianity was exemplified in 1081 when William the Conqueror, no less, made a pilgrimage to this remote part of his new kingdom to pay his respects. (During the Middle Ages, two pilgrimages to St Davids equalled one to Rome.)
Today, St Davids Cathedral, begun in 1181 but largely destroyed by Cromwell's Roundhead army after the Civil War, dates mainly from Sir Gilbert Scott's Gothic reconstruction in the 19th century.
It's a joyous, idiosyncratic, geometrically bewildering building, romantically set in a lush, green hollow with the rest of the 1200-strong town above it on the surrounding hills.
David himself was supposedly the son of another saint. A chaste woman called Nonita ("St Non") was raped by a visiting noble and gave birth to David on a clifftop during a raging storm.
David's most celebrated miracle is said to have been while he was preaching to a large crowd at a synod.
When those at the back complained they couldn't hear him, the ground on which he was standing apparently rose into a small green hill so his audience could see him. (The last miracle Pembrokeshire needed was yet another small, green hill).
Anyway, by now I'm feeling peckish and it seems churlish to leave St Davids without tasting the national vegetable. Gerlach says the cathedral refectory will definitely have leek soup on the menu. Sadly, it's not open for another hour, so I climb the 39 steps linking the cathedral with the city.
"Try the Farmer's Boy pub," a local says. But the traditional-looking Welsh hostelry, with its traditional range of ales, has gone gourmet. Yes, they have soup: a choice of gazpacho or spicy Thai.
Next stop is the butcher-deli. They offer a wide range of pies and Welsh pasties, but the only soup on offer is carrot and coriander. Not a leek to be seen.
Eventually, since the light drizzle has been replaced by a sunny interlude, I take an outside table at the Sound Cafe which is offering "traditional Welsh cawl".
It's not leek soup, but at least its a Welsh national delicacy (along with the edible seaweed known as laverbread), And this one comes with beef, carrots, onions, potatoes - and leeks. Delicious.
Mission accomplished, there's time to explore. Pembrokeshire is undoubtedly one of Britain's most scenically splendid secret corners.
Good friends rent a cottage there every northern summer, just to relax, read books and enjoy "the Cornish lifestyle" at two-thirds of the cost. However, if you are more active than them - and frankly, who isn't? -Pembrokeshire is an adventure coast. The Pembroke Coastal Path is 300 kilometres long, all of it beautiful and most of it hilly.
If trekking isn't your thing, there is kayaking, cycling, fishing, kitesurfing, sailing and surfing.
My afternoon is spent, however, on a more recent passion: bird-watching. From St Davids, you can take boat rides to explore the Viking-named Skomer and Skokholm islands on the other side of St Brides Bay.
These are world-famous nesting sites. About 310,000 pairs of Manx shearwaters breed on Skomer - half the world's population of these seabirds, while 10,000 breeding pairs of Atlantic puffins divide their time between the two islands.
For those with more time, there's now a hostel on Skomer. And here's a tip: take your own leeks if you fancy soup.
TRIP NOTES
MORE INFORMATION
GETTING THERE
St Davids is 412 kilometres west of London via the M4, A48, A40 and A487.
Steve Meacham travelled at his own expense.
