The largest Welsh island had its own long-distance path officially opened in 2006, covering much of the coast. I went to find out what it’s about.

We’d walked 300 yards from Cemlyn Bay car park, the sun had broken through the clouds and now we were on a low, turf-topped cliff. We could see how it was formed by centuries of winter storms, chomping car-sized rocks out of the coast and spilling them into the sea below.

“You aren’t going to believe this, but there’s an enormous seal in the water right down there. And he’s watching us.” “Where? Oh, jeepers – he’s huge!” The leaflet in our cottage had suggested that grey seals looked rather dog-like. But at nine feet or more, and stone’s-throw close, this large male was more like a bear. He continued staring for three or four minutes – and the curiosity was mutual.

It’s hard not to be impressed when you meet a fearless, 40-stone carnivore, though we could only guess at what he made of we leg-ridden humans silhouetted against the sky. Finally, with what seemed like a reluctant sniff, the seal resumed his afternoon’s hunt, nosing slowly along the bay’s inlets and reefs with the incoming tide. We could still see his broad back ten minutes later.

Anglesey in autumn half-term week: people who enjoy shopping malls, think waterproof clothes are uncool and expect to be ‘entertained’ wherever they go wouldn’t like it. On the other hand, if you hanker for hours of fresh air, rugged walking and spectacular sea views, followed by a tramp back to a roomy farmhouse to play Monopoly in front of the fire…well, it’s ideal.

Having fallen in love with camping in Cornwall when Freddie and Lottie were still small, Fiona and I had never considered Anglesey before, but we’d heard about the new coast path and wanted to try it out. Our only previous experience of the island had combined its two least attractive features: a ramrod-straight motorway that in places might as well be in Belgium, and the ferry port of Holyhead – not one of the prettiest sights in Britain. Fortunately, the rest of the island is nothing like that.

Shaped by livestock farming, Anglesey’s undulating countryside is mostly an emerald jigsaw of pasture fields, as green as Ireland’s, and edged with hedges and stone walls. Gigantic rock outcrops, and patches of wetland or (in the east) woodland, break up the pattern. It’s a pretty landscape to drive through, especially as the roads are superbly maintained, but what’s really special about the place is the richness of the coastline.

Serious walkers (and we met a few) can apparently see off all 125 miles of the coastal path in 12 days. It’s not hard to see why they’d want to: about 95 per cent of the distance falls within Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs). But children march to a shorter, more explosive drum than grown-ups, and we spent our week driving somewhere promising, then exploring on foot.

One of the first places we found was Newborough Forest, close to the island’s southernmost tip. Originally part of the surrounding sand dunes, it was planted with pine trees decades ago. The result is heaven for kids: the paths constantly twist, fork and re-merge, disappear over hummocks, and plunge you into dense cover: ‘challenging’ was Lottie’s word for it. With the dog, the kids spent an hour or two tearing down and up slopes between the trees, leaping across streams, and throwing pine cones.

Eventually we emerged into the open, to find ourselves on the edge of an immense marsh. Dark, peaty pools sucked and squelched at our boots until only Freddie and the dog believed we were still on the right path. Further than even they could go, the influence of the salt water took over, and the landscape danced end-to-end with chest-high purple-brown reeds hissing in the wind – the same eerie sound Pip must have heard just before meeting Magwitch in Great Expectations. It seemed nowhere could be more utterly peaceful.

The weather can change fast on Anglesey. A couple of afternoons we were forced to return to our cottage early, though even that had its advantages. We used the time to laze about, read, make flapjacks for the next day’s walk, or cook up stupendous meals using local meat and veg from Hooton’s Home Grown just up the road. But the best of our walking down-time had to be our visit to the Sea Zoo a mile or two in the other direction.

This amazing place aims to awaken a new respect for the marine environment in every visitor. It certainly worked on us. Seriously big aquaria show off Anglesey’s marine habitats and wildlife, from baby seahorses and rock pools right up to sharks, rays and wicked-fanged congers. But our favourites were the lobsters. You would not believe how many moving parts they use just to eat – something you can only appreciate from under a glass-bottomed tank. “It looks like a factory,” was Lottie’s apt description.

The zoo runs a lobster hatchery to help re-stock local waters after years of over-fishing. Visitors oooh’d and ahhh’d at the expectant mothers gently fanning their eggs and, next to them, the babies spending their plankton stage in bubbling vats, sadly oblivious to the need for conservation (they eat each other). But what really hits you is an adult lobster’s permanence. Predation and thermidor permitting, these crustacean methuselahs can live 50 or 80 years, and grow a yard long. “We’ll never eat a lobster,” Freddie and Lottie vowed as we left.

The following day they wanted to go straight back for another look, but the overnight storm had scoured the sky to a clear, cloudless blue, and Fiona and I pulled rank to visit the sandy beaches of the east.

The coastal path winds past nearly all of them, and we’d heard the best was one of the smallest – Traeth yr Ora, north of the village of Moelfre (traeth meaning beach). To get there, you can park in neighbouring Traeth Lligwy, and stroll a mile or so over a freshwater creek, through the dunes, along a clifftop hedge and across a field.

It actually took us two hours to get to Traeth yr Ora, because, in typical Anglesey style, there were too many distractions: a ruined concrete lookout post to explore; a boulder-beach decked with rocks of red, green, blue, black, white, yellow and brown; tidal pools hiding tiny crabs, starfish, gobies and plankton; rocks, slippery with seaweed, which brought a groan of anguish from Freddie as he saw the diving possibilities; and a stream which obligingly gushed out of a cliff just as our water bottles ran dry.

We got to the beach itself at 11 o’clock, and we were the first and only visitors. It was as lovely as we’d been told: 500 yards of billiard-table sand in a horseshoe of steep-sloping bracken and trees. It’s worth struggling up the M6 just for this – and the dog’s glad barks showed we weren’t the only ones who thought so.

If we had to choose just one other place to head for in perfect weather, we’d pick the famous South Stack, just past Holyhead on the highest, wildest part of Anglesey. In spring and early summer the 140-metre cliffs are home to great colonies of seabirds interrupting their mysterious, storm-battered lives to raise their chicks on a diet of sandeels and fresh air. By autumn they’re gone, though ravens and gulls still soar imperiously above the chasms and crashing waves. The vegetation on this exposed coast is strange beyond measure. Plants up to ten feet high inland are pruned by the wind and salt to bonsai dimensions: ivy, blackthorn, gorse and heather are mere scraps.

We liked South Stack. The wind and the vertigo play powerful games with your senses. As Fiona observed, these are seriously big cliffs: if you fall off the edge you will die.

Towards the end of our week we asked Freddie and Lottie what they thought of Anglesey. For Freddie, who will happily spend all day in the water, the sea was reason enough to want to come back. Lottie, despite early misgivings about ‘boring’ walking, agreed it was not boring at all. How would they describe it, then?

“Peaceful.”
“Shut.”
“Friendly people.”

This is true. Much of Anglesey is having a hard time economically, and the population is shrinking as farming fails to satisfy the aspirations of the next generation. Yet the people you meet out in the countryside are full of humour and tolerance. A farmer who’d watched us walk through a field of sheep with a dog, greet a muddy pony and rejoin the road, waved cheerfully from his tractor.

Another gentleman on footpath maintenance duty downed his tools and beamed with pleasure to watch Freddie leap 15 feet off a bridge. “It’s marvellous what a pair of young legs will do,” he said as we approached. Then again, maybe he’d seen me attempt the same thing on 43 year old legs, and fall in the river.

We finished our five days on Anglesey well fed, well-exercised, and with a car full of mud and sand. As an escape from the reckless pace of daily life, and a chance to be together as a family, it was a perfect week.

The island doesn’t have the knock-your-block-off grandeur of Snowdonia – or even, in our experience, much druidical mystery beyond the occasional menhir. But it is still a place apart. I noticed an ancient, gnarled tree in a field by our cottage, with exposed roots like a huge crown. Just as we were leaving, I went for a closer look. It was a sycamore: a tree we usually think of as an unsightly pest. Yet here it had become as beautiful as an oak, sat on a tangle of contorted wood big enough to hide a nest of giant congers.

We’ll be back

Author Bio: Duncan writes about all things Welsh, and specialises in UK Breaks, activity holidays and UK family holidays.

Category: Travel
Keywords: UK breaks, activity holidays, UK family holidays