I had been a little trepidacious about today’s route, partly because of the promised spectacular sea-cliffs and partly because I had so disliked the entrance into Holyhead back in the autumn and wasn’t looking forward to what I assumed would be more of the same. But to complete the Coastal Path, you need to walk the whole of the Path and to avoid the section because of these fears would have been a gross dereliction of the duty that I’d set myself.
It was the Saturday of May Bank Holiday weekend when we pulled up in a car park in Trearrdur Bay, both Jan and I feeling a little weary having been up and about at six o’clock to get us here in time to catch the bus into Holyhead. We’d anticipated a bit more traffic with it being a Bank Holiday - and with dry and sunny forecast at that - but had been delighted to have made really good time and arrived with just over half an hour to spare. The bus was similarly prompt and it was only ten minutes after getting on board that we were dropped off in the town centre. This remained as ugly as I had remembered and as I had been describing to Jan as we drove up.
St Cybi’s church was under heavy scaffolding so we passed quickly through the churchyard, touching the official start/finish plaque as we did so. Within minutes we’d left the worst of the boarded up shops and pubs behind us and were ambling along a grass-lined road with the maritime museum, bistro and posh new marina on the opposite side. It was surprisingly pleasant - even the huge behemoth ferries coming in from Dublin and Dun Laoghaire gleamed in the first warm sunshine of the year and added to rather than detracted from the view. “This
isn’t so bad,” said Jan and I was forced to grudgingly agree. Nonetheless I was happy to pass out of the town, although there are a couple of final boarded-up properties to pass before open coast is reached. One huge castellated building was the former home of the main contractor on the building of the town’s breakwater, built between 1845 and 1873. Later on it became a luxurious hotel but it has been empty for many, many years and was further damaged by a severe fire in 2011 when it was reported as being used by homeless people - something I would suspect is still the case. Almost next door is the former Government House, also known as Porth-y-Felin House, a former MOD building that has also been allowed to go to wrack and ruin in recent years. There have been ambitious plans for each of these sites in recent years but no doubt the state of the economy has at the very least put these on hold for the time being. These are sad, sad places - it was no hardship to leave them behind and head instead down to the surprisingly azure sea beyond.
The path meets the sea just at the point that the breakwater starts its near two mile journey out into the bay, its long arm giving shelter to the water within and effectively increasing the capacity of the harbour to more than twice its natural size. At the end of it sits a squat little lighthouse, square-sided rather than the more normal circular plan and I well remember been dragged out one evening to walk the 1.7 miles out to it and back again - for no reason that I can fathom other than to tire us out so that Mum and Dad and Pat and Gwen could have a decent night’s sleep having reduced us to a state of sheer exhaustion. This morning we had a good twelve miles ahead of us and nothing would induce us to add a pretty dull three and a half miles to the distance by repeating that expedition.
Our way instead led around a low-lying headland grazed by pretty little ponies to keep the grass close-cropped and so help ground-nesting birds. Here and there heather has been burnt back, again to the benefit of wildlife, and I made the point to Jan that this was the type of habitat where I could imagine us coming across lizards sunning themselves for the first time this year. Of course, the logical progression from this statement was that snakes may have the same idea but I decided not to go that extra step at this time and instead chose to drink in the stunning view out to sea. Beyond the breakwater I could still see the Skerries - it seemed that they had been accompanying me forever, as I’d first spotted them back before Cemaes; ahead lay steep cliffs and a glimpse of North Stack‘s telegraph station, somewhere we would be seeing from a lot closer later in the morning; and of course the glorious blue of the sun-blessed sea, in stark contrast to the day I’d walked in to town some six months earlier. An interpretation board spoke of the possibility of porpoises and dolphins but we were not to be so lucky - the tiniest source of disappointment when we have seen so much is that we have thus far failed to see these obviously mythical mammals.
Breakwater Country Park was our next target, the source of so much of the stone infill for the huge construction that we had just left behind, although we were merely passing through for a couple of hundred yards. What little we saw of the park was impressive - beautifully designed kissing gates, stiles and wooden benches with lovely little details etched into them; mosaics of ships and plants (and even the Coastal Path’s tern logo); excellent interpretation boards - but what was most impressive was the view of the suddenly mountainous terrain ahead. Granted the most obvious “cliff” face was that of the quarry that provided that infill but beyond it were the slopes of Holyhead Mountain, gleaming white in the bright sunlight to clearly illustrate their limestone construction. We were a little nonplussed as to how we would avoid this sheer cliff-face, leading us to refer back to the guidebook before realising that our path made its way between the salt water and the sea’s strand, hugging tightly to the cliff edge as it did so.
I’ve highlighted more than once my fear of heights and this was another occasion when that fear showed itself - the drop was not inconsiderable, the path narrow and my mind began to work overtime, telling me how easy (and how potentially fatal) a trip here would be. Jan on the other hand was strolling along as though popping down to the shops, giving no thought at all to the drop to her right other than marvelling at the beauty of it all. I was incredibly impressed, as I always am by such sang-froid in such situations. Gradually that calm began to transmit itself back to me and I stood a little taller and forced myself to look back and take in the view, surprising myself at how easy I found it. Of course, it helped that the view was one of the most spectacular we’d yet seen, the s-shape of the breakwater leading the eye out across the bay towards Carmel Head in one direction and the steep cliffs of North Stack in the other. It was warm now and we removed fleeces and pulled on sunglasses, Jan commenting upon the Mediterranean feel - with the heat and the light and the rocky surroundings, like the Amalfi Coast or Sicily - a feel that grew more pronounced as we came upon a little magazine building that would once have safely housed explosives for use in the quarry but could conceivably have been a tiny roadside shrine or station of the cross with just a little imagination.
Ahead of us we could now see the track that leads to North Stack. Until recently I hadn’t been aware that there was a North Stack, although it’s only logical given the existence of the much better know South Stack. The stack itself is strictly speaking the tiny offshore island but has come to be used for the headland as well. I first saw it on an episode of Country File when (I think) Matt Baker went to have a look around the former signal station as it was put on the market by its artist owner. The most remarkable thing about the building was the one and a half mile drive along a bumpy private track that is only navigable by Land Rover and requires an absolute faith that the vehicle is up to it. At one point it seemed like you had to drive off the edge of the world as the track dropped steeply down to its final destination. The house is situated right on the brink of the cliff edge, with sheer drops all around; not a place I can ever imagine myself living but an idyllic spot for the right person, probably someone fond of sea-birds. As we crossed the access track I found myself wondering again at the loneliness and wildness of the location. Like so many lighthouses, you would need to be a very particular kind of person to cope with life here on the edge of the world. The building was first built here to provide warnings in the event of fog - two cannons firing in succession to warn ships away from the “rugged island” of the Welsh name “Ynys Arw”. Another magazine house, still standing, was built to house the charges for these. The cannons were eventually replaced by a siren and this was transferred to the lighthouse at South Stack over twenty years ago, leaving North Stack to exist purely as a private house and studio. It is, without a doubt, the most spectacular location of any house I have ever seen and nothing, but nothing, would induce me to mow the lawns here!
Beyond the track the path crests a little rise and suddenly the sea lies in front of you rather than to your right, the coast have turned to the south-west at the stack. And ahead of you, surprisingly close and viewed from an unusual angle as it is, lies the most stupendous view of the whole path - South Stack lighthouse across the curve of Gogarth Bay and the tallest, sheerest sea-cliffs in the north of Wales. Obviously, it helped enormously that the sun was out, the sky blue and the sea a shade of turquoise that contrasted nicely with the white of the lighthouse but both Jan and I stood and stared, big grins on our faces. The last half hour had been terrific and the view had been hard-earned. If it wasn’t the best moment of the whole circuit, it was pretty close. Jan wanted to know if this was the lighthouse from the current Wales Tourist Board TV ads - it was, albeit still a couple of miles distant as the herring gull flies; more than that by the land route and with a deal more climbing. But before we began that climb we paused to drink in the picture postcard for a few minutes.
Too soon we turned and set off uphill. The path here is extremely well-made, a series of steps zig-zagging between the heather and the gorse, stonechats perching on the topmost branches and singing their little hearts out with its distinctive sound of two stones striking together. As we made those first few steps we were met by a young chap clambering down towards us, weighed down by a climbing helmet, a long coil of rope and assorted karabiners, screws and other rock-climbing paraphernalia. We stood to one side to let him pass and I asked if the equipment was needed higher up. He shook his head. “I’m looking for the rock climbs. Can’t find them anywhere.” The guide book made mention of some routes on the cliffs of Gogarth Bay below and Holyhead Mountain above but this chap seemed a bit dispirited about his inability to find them. He carried on past us, shaking his head. He wasn’t having half as good a day as we were, clearly.
On and on we went, heads down, eyes bright and a song in our hearts. In my case it was Van Morrison’s “These Are The Days” - the first line of which is “These are the days of the endless summer” which is pretty much how it felt that morning with a Bank Holiday stretching away into the distance of Monday evening - and I found myself humming along with its “na, na, na, na” closing refrain. “These are the days now that we must savour/ And we must enjoy as we can/ These are the days that will last forever/ You’ve got to hold them in your heart.”
Minutes later we came over the top of the hill and by common unspoken consent hauled off our rucksacks and threw ourselves down for a coffee and Kit-Kat. This was a ruined old lookout point, somewhere from which a watcher could see for miles around - even though there was the hint of a sea-mist forming, we could still make out the Isle of Man to the north, the Lleyn Peninsula and Bardsey Island to the south west and Snowdonia to the south. Even Holyhead looked pretty good from up here and the coffee and chocolate tasted special too. I am, I think, a man of simple pleasures and life doesn’t get a great deal more simple than this - a walk with a friend, a lovely view, the weight of a rucksack removed, legs stretched, coffee and chocolate - but it doesn’t get a great deal better either. Bill Bryson has written of the “low-level ecstasy” of such moments when walking the Appalachian Trail and it’s moments like this that the description rings absolutely true.
Across a little gully lay the bulk of Holyhead Mountain itself, not that much higher than we were and seemingly easily attainable but off-route and requiring a detour to attain its summit. I’d made it clear from the outset that I’d happily forego this if Jan didn’t want to but in the end I made the decision for her - I didn’t think we’d get a better view than we’d just had and thought we’d probably need the energy for later in the day. Instead we threaded our way down the myriad paths leading downhill. Although this was without question the busiest day that we’d seen on the path it was only now that we began to see the anticipated Bank Holiday crowds, family groups and couples in normal shoes rather than walking boots and it was clear that we were back within easy reach of a car park - South Stack could not be far away now.
A couple of hours earlier I’d mentioned the possibility of lizards and as we crossed the approach road to a large signal station to our right I spotted something scuttling into the heather a few yards ahead. Triumphantly I gestured to Jan but too late - it was gone already but I was convinced it was a lizard and a small one at that. No more than ten or fifteen yards further we had confirmation as either a slower or more confident one strolled across the path and into the heather where it stopped, turned and gazed up languidly at us as though daring us to make a move towards it. The only move I was making was to try and get a photo but even that slight movement was too much and he slipped deeper into the undergrowth and out of sight. We plodded on, Jan happy to have seen him and me still happier to have been proved right in my assessment of the habitat - although I still had that question mark about snakes in the back of my mind.
Next though I had to face my fear of heights again as we headed out along the high headland with the high cliffs and rock-climbs of Gogarth Bay that we had admired from above North Stack now down to our right. If the sky wasn’t quite as blue as it had been, and the sea not quite the shade of aquamarine, the day remained a lovely one for walking and conditions underfoot were ideal. The path was firm and sandy, with occasional rocky outcrops down which we descended carefully, wary of twisting an ankle or knee joint. Jan’s trekking pole had come in handy today and it would remain useful for a while yet. The edge of the headland was far enough away for it not to be a worry and then ahead of us we saw the ruins of an old telegraph station. There were three or four little groups dotted around here and we quickly realised that this was a splendid viewpoint from which to see the lighthouse a couple of hundred feet below, a classic picture postcard aspect that was well worth the moments spent drinking it in. Stunning though it was, I couldn’t bring myself to stroll in front of the telegraph station and get an extra few feet of elevation as Jan was; I stayed happily to its left, bravely peering over the edge and hoping that the photos I took gave some indication of the steep grassy slopes.
It was another ten minutes walk before we came to the car parks and ice cream vans and the 400 steps down to the little island on which the lighthouse stands. Built in the early nineteenth century, it had been a long time coming as the first petition for a light to be situated here was during the reign of Charles II. The cost - £12,000 - seems tiny and apparently equates to about £10million today, using average earnings as a benchmark, which still doesn’t seem outrageous. The bridge across to the island was a later addition, replacing the original rope and basket access - an even scarier option than the bridge still appears to me. Having said which, I’ve never made it down those 400 steps - we started down them once as children but didn’t really get far. As it was early evening, we wouldn’t have been able to go across the bridge - even if it was open to visitors back in the seventies. That evening we’d had to let mum get out of the car’s passenger seat and walk up ahead of us as the low setting sun had made visibility almost impossible. I think I’d also got pretty sunburnt that day so all in all it wasn’t the best of expeditions - and yet thirty-five years later I still remember it. Will today’s be as memorable? Well I’ll be in my early eighties but I sincerely hope so.
As we stood, leaning on the stone wall and gazing down at the very scene that had adorned the recent TV ads that Jan had mentioned, a young girl passed behind us holding hands with her Dad. She was skipping along, talking nineteen to the dozen but one phrase caught my attention. “Dad, do you think the snake could see us as well?” I glanced across at Jan but it seemed she hadn’t heard. She wouldn’t have cared anyway - the only time I’ve seen one in the wild was in her company and she was walking quickly towards the snake to get a better view as I was walking away quickly in the opposite direction to avoid even the minimal view that I’d had. As I’ve pointed out earlier, I had half anticipated this development but right now I wasn’t feeling particularly pleased to have been proved right. I needn’t have worried - wherever their snake might have been, we had seen our last reptile of the day with that second little lizard a half hour earlier. I didn’t know that at the time but I didn’t dwell on the possibility and thrust it to the back of my mind for time being at least.
A couple of hundred yards to our left and a couple of hundred feet below stood the pristine white Ellin’s Tower, a castellated summer house when first built in 1868 but these days a viewing point for the RSPB whose visitor centre and café lie alongside the road above. The wide path down to the tower again skirts some pretty spectacular cliffs - home to some of the seabirds that are the RSPB’s raison d’etre here - and I veered over to the left hand side to keep some distance between me and the edge. Jan, fearless, hugged the right hand side, gazing into the depths in search of puffins. On arriving outside the tower I asked her to pose in front of the “danger - cliff edge” sign with the lighthouse behind her and fired off a couple of quick shots. A woman sat on the bench behind me called out to ask if I wanted one taken of the two of us - assuming, I guess, that we were a couple. I declined, telling her that one of us was braver than the other but I wouldn’t say which of the two of us it was. “Don’t worry. I’d already noticed,” she said laughing. Instead we made our way to the tower where we got a good look at the only puffin we would see today - three feet tall and with a slot in its head for donations. The tower has a viewing platform on its upper floor, with telescopes available to look through each of the three large picture windows. With so much glass, and with its situation tight to the cliff edge, I felt more than a little exposed but there was such a crush of people in a tiny space that I could hang back and just peer out over their heads towards the huge granite cliff faces. Close-circuit television screens showed razorbills nesting, but as yet no puffins - delayed, no doubt, by the long winter that we were only just beginning to feel had finally gone, even though it was snowing heavily in Scotland that very day. We’d hoped to see these gorgeous birds, even if it was only on TV, but were out of luck here. In such a throng, though, we would have had at best only a partial view, so we shrugged off that small disappointment and set off in search of a more tranquil spot for a late lunch.
Only a few hundred yards had passed before a bench presented itself, almost brand new it was dedicated to a Dorothy who had died only six months earlier. She certainly had a terrific view form her bench and there were a number of jealous looks from passing walkers as we dined. But this wasn’t a time to be hanging around for it was already half past two and the afternoon was passing quickly. Instead we took to a combination of road and roadside path for a mile or so, passing by a couple of very different properties with “For Sale” signs at the gate. The first was a near-derelict farmhouse with outbuildings, on the market for £695,000 (!!!) and “requiring substantial renovation” - in fairness it came with substantial land; the second was a gorgeous whitewashed cottage, probably renovated in the recent past and with its outbuildings also converted to holiday homes. Sarah, I know, would have loved the chance to renovate the first one but finances don’t really stretch that far at the moment so I reluctantly passed by without making an offer.
Pleasant though the afternoon was, we wanted the grass and rocks beneath our feet rather than tarmac and it was a relief to step over a stile and onto the headland of Penrhyn Mawr , otherwise known as The Range. Over to our right we could still see South Stack, although by now we were almost on a level with it rather than looking down and could clearly see the light flashing every ten seconds - we should have seen it clearly of course, as it is visible up to twenty four miles nautical miles away which equates to roughly twenty eight “land” miles. As the rocky shore presented little in the way of danger to us as long as we didn’t stray too close to the edge, we were largely able to ignore the warning and push on regardless. And for the next twenty or thirty minutes we did so in a companionable silence - the path wended its way through yet more heather and gorse, easy to follow and with lovely views and the sun again shone brightly whilst a brisk breeze ruffled both the waves and our hair. Skylarks, stonechats and wheatears provided occasional distraction from the views seaward but by and large we just plodded on and enjoyed the constantly changing seascapes.
The coast at this point consisted of a series of deep rocky inlets creating steep rocky headlands, small coves and little shingle beaches. The rocks here seem to lie at an angle, rather than horizontally, and to be “layered” resulting in jagged outcroppings both on and offshore. These offshore islets create unusual and strong tidal races and are a major attraction for the sea kayaking community - as we were to witness with at least three separate groups being out and about this afternoon and up to forty people enjoying the strong currents and choppy surf. Performing my own surfing - of the internet, obviously - there are some spectacular photos posted which almost but not quite tempt me into donning a wet suit, finding an experienced guide and taking to the water. Rock climbing and coasteering are also popular leisure pursuits and we were to see healthy numbers of adherents to each activity - neither of which have quite the allure of kayaking, for me at least.
After about an hour we had turned from walking south-west to east-north-east and the only sandy beach between South Stack and Trearrdur Bay - Porth Dafarch. It’s far from large but is obviously popular with both families and kayakers - we counted over fifty boats even this late in the day and there remained plenty of kids running around, building sandcastles, looking in rock pools. It was terrific - a proper, old-fashioned beach and we were pleased to see that a proper old-fashioned van was there offering a selection of hot drinks, for the breeze had strengthened once more and clouds hidden the sun as we turned the corner and the temperature had dropped accordingly. The coffee it provided wasn’t great - you could taste the limescale on the element of the water-heater and a Styrofoam cup is never pleasant - and yet we thoroughly enjoyed our half hour break. There was just so much to watch - in particular, a chap in bright orange oilskin coat and trousers striding into the flowing tide like a latter day King Canute trying to defy the waves and failing utterly miserably, then turning around and repeating the forlorn process two or three times. A brother and sister then grabbed our attention, battling out for five or ten minutes for the joys of a five or ten second “ride” on their body-boards. It seemed a lot of effort for minimal reward to our eyes but no doubt they would say the same of our five hour tramp from Holyhead just to get here.
Of the final couple of miles there is little to say. The path switched from short-cropped grass to tarmac to pavement, there were pretty views out to sea and occasionally inland and the weather remained bright and sunny. The trouble is there was no way that a perfectly pleasant last afternoon stroll could match up to the glories we had experienced this morning. We were still chatting about the splendours of earlier and I mentioned just how dispiriting the walk into Holyhead had been and how it was flung into even starker relief by the route out of the town. It seems clear to me that if Holyhead must be the start and finish of the route, then the walk should be done in clockwise fashion rather than anti-clockwise - at least in this fashion you have a spectacular final leg instead of the rather dull and ugly finish that the “official” guide book provides - not the author’s choice I would guess but instead a political decision. Our choice of Menai as the place of departure and arrival seems a better one to me, as well as being a logical spot being the point of arrival on the island.
The one piece of sustained interest in this final half hour was the prominent Craig Y Mor house on the approach to Trearddur Bay itself. This Grade II listed building attracts the eye by virtue of its sheer bulk, its isolated location on a slightly elevated promontory and the sheer ugliness of its neo-Georgian design. It was built in the early part of the last century for one of the founder members of the local sailing club - a William Smellie (interesting surname!) I’m all for the listing of buildings to prevent the destruction of architectural gems or properties of especial interest but this building is truly ugly and because of its situation just demands attention. I would have absolutely no qualms about this building being raised to the ground - obviously with the full consent of the owners, I am not advocating arson but would gladly see this particular blot on the landscape de-listed and devoid of its protection. We hummed and hawed about whether or not the house was occupied but ultimately came to the conclusion that it was - if only because the windows remained intact as opposed to vandalised, as would surely be the case if it was derelict.
Despite the slightly low-key end to the day we had enjoyed a lovely day in some of the most beautiful scenery to be seen on the island. The stretch between Breakwater Park and South Stack was without a doubt the best few miles of the whole path - and there is some pretty strong competition for that title let me tell you. The rest of the day was pretty good too and a visit to Llandudno and Jan’s favourite chip shop in the whole world was the perfect end to a near perfect day.
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