Holyhead to Church Bay: The Morning After the Night Before

We had the most fabulous first night in the holiday home. I must say that Rhian had played a blinder when she booked the cottage. Not only was the house amazingly well set up and comfortable but it also had a garden that gave us a stunning view across to Holyhead where we would be starting the main body of the walk. We had lounged, drinking wine, enjoying our dinner and when the sun slipped behind the hills, toddled indoors to play several (dreadful) games of pool, listening to the music of our misspent youth. It was quite possibly the best start to our walking holidays. Even better, neither of us had to spend the holiday in a penitential cell which happened when I'd done the booking in Barmouth.

Great memories! It was my turn for the main bedroom that time and I had a double bed, a chaise longue, window seat, capacious wardrobe and a dressing table as well as the double bed in there! I could hear Helen's knees bumping against the wall when she sat on the side of her bed next door. Oh how we laughed!

This time our rooms were similarly comfortable. It really was a beautiful place to stay and with less smirking on my part. I was quite smug about my ability to book a great holiday home though.

This was the games room. The step ladder made some shots a bit tricky but this was more than compensated for by a beer fridge and a wood burning stove. It was such a fantastic place.

Astonishingly, I woke without a hangover and we enjoyed a pleasant breakfast and got ourselves organised for the day. We had very little driving to do this day as the end point was going to be just a mile or so down from the house to the bay, and the starting point was in Holyhead, which was visible from the garden. It was going to be 13 miles but we had the advantage of it being almost totally flat and the weather was perfect for walking. This was going to be a doddle.

Holyhead wasn't the most prepossessing of places. The centre of town was a little tired and most of the visitors seemed to only stay as long is it took them to get to the ferry terminal and sail to Ireland. We drove slowly through the one way system, past vape shops and charity shops and found a place to park. The first place of note was St Cibi's church, we didn't go in as we were keen to get going and the road took us past building yards and eventually to a modern, steel bridge that looked for all the world like a gigantic venus flytrap. We climbed up and over this and dipped down into the train station. This backs onto the port and we walked past booking desks but it was very quiet when we walked through and everything was closed. All of Holyhead seemed shut for the day. Getting out the other side was a little confusing and we were instantly lost.

'For Pete's sake, how do we keep doing this?' asked Rhian, fricatives and plosives abounding, 'This is the last section of the Path and we are just as incompetent as when we started!'

'No idea. But at least we don't fall over as often.'

'Small mercies! This is just ridiculous. Why can we never find the start of the path?' (Sibilance there expressing her frustration)

I half thought of saying we had found St Cibi's church quite easily and that was the official start of the path but saw the look on Rhian's face and thought better of it. Plus I understood her frustration. You'd have thought that eight years of walking would have improved us but no, we started by getting lost. It's exasperating!

We walked up and down small roads and eventually left the town, finally getting onto the WCP at Penrhos beach. We stopped briefly to chat with two young volunteers who were at a pop up tent, promoting litter picking on the beach. They asked us if we were interested in doing some and we explained that we were doing a linear walk and so wouldn't be coming back to them. This seemed to confuse them a bit as the beach wasn't that long. They cheerily asked where we were walking to and this gave us (well me really, I'm the one with the ego) the chance to brag that we were walking 13 miles to Church Bay. They looked both surprised and a little impressed by this and forgave us for not litter picking for them.

Towards the end of the beach we walked round an embankment and a small rocky headland and saw this arch. I wanted to get a better shot by getting closer in but there didn't seem to be a way of getting down easily. I didn't fancy breaking my leg so early in the day (its nice to leave yourself something to do in the afternoon) so took this shot instead. Just above this is a rounded building known as the Battery which seems to be part of the Penrhos Estate.

Helen was so gung ho about taking this photo that I thought I was going to have to hang on to her by the waistband of her walking trousers to stop her breaking her neck. Thankfully she saw sense when she saw the potential for toppling over and breaking some bones.

We walked on, enjoying the fresh air and the quiet and eventually started a slow climb up towards a large stone seat. Up to this point we had had the path to ourselves but a group of people were clustered round the seat taking pictures of each other and enjoying the views. We got closer and they started to move on.

'You don't have to go just because we have arrived' I shouted.

'No we need to get a move on, we are walking to Church Bay' there was a slight pause for us to look impressed.

'Us too!', same slight pause. We all looked noncommittally supportive of each other without ceding 'Best Long Distance Walker' to the other group. Rather than getting into competitive distance boasting we fell to talking and they told us that they were walking the Anglesey Coast Path in memory of a family member who had recently died of cancer, raising money along the way. You see this quite a lot on the Path. We have come across quite a few people doing charity walks. People seem driven to make something positive out of a loss and we have had lots of great chats along the way. One of the most memorable was a young woman who was walking the whole path to raise money for a bee preservation charity. Walking the whole thing in one go is bloody impressive. Normally I would feel envious loathing for someone so young and fit but she was so bouncy and enthusiastic I didn't want to push her off the side of the mountain we were standing on.

This time we not only had a chat but one of the ladies gave us a hand crocheted heart in memory of their relative. They really were a lovely bunch of walkers.

They left and we explored the large stone seat. There was nothing to let us know anything about it and we wondered if this was Tunnicliffe's seat, a place mentioned in the guide book.

Rhian at the stone seat. It was quite impressive and gave us some good views, none of which I thought to photograph. Still, the Old Girl looks quite good, doesn't she? From a distance - best not to get too close to see the ravages of time in more detail.

The path took us further into Penrhos Country park and into the forest. Along the way we came across the actual Tunnicliffe's seat which memorialised a commercial artist who used to come to this area and bird watch. He was highly successful and drew the cover for Tarka The Otter and also illustrated some Ladybird books and now here we were sitting on his seat. And very nice it was too.

I had heard of Mr Tunnicliffe and remember his work with affection. I wince at Helen's choice of the word "nice" here, I am afraid. Being an English teacher I always told my students that it was banned from my lessons and that there were hundreds of other, better words. I would then give them a thesaurus or challenge them to think of as many as they could. It would drive them bonkers and sometimes bring out the show-offs amongst them, those who had heard a random "good" word somewhere or who had read an intriguing word in a book and just wanted to tell us all about it. Great fun - or at least I thought so...

Next up was a pet cemetery, a quiet and wistful little place. Poor Old Tiggy Puss.

There were several families exploring this interesting plot, and the woods were clearly a popular place for walks and riding bikes.

The Stanley family, who owned the Penrhos estate in the 1800s, had opened up their land for the public to use in this way and using it they were!

We paused for a sit-down on a bench in the coastal park and looked across the estuary to our route onwards. We had to walk across the Stanley embankment first, and this and the park area was busy with walkers, their dogs and with cyclists. It was a pleasant and easy stroll across and we could see, up ahead, the family group we had chatted to earlier.

This photo is taken from the Stanley embankment which we crossed on our way towards the Alaw estuary, a drainage sluice which was interesting. Please note, interesting, not 'nice'. The embankment is known locally as the Cobb. It forms one of the connections between Holyhead and Anglesey 'proper' the construction was overseen by Thomas Telford in 1822 and took a year to complete. The workers were housed in a campsite. After the bridge was completed, the campsite developed into the permanent village of Valley and in 1840, the bridge was widened to take the railway. This took four years. Those Victorians, eh? they could really build a railway. Those 'responsible' for HS2 (and I use that in its loosest possibly sense) should take note.

We headed towards the Alaw estuary, past a garage and up over some fields and through a housing estate. It wasn't beautiful, but it was pleasant and relaxing and we were anticipating some lovely coastal views further on. We found ourselves unconsciously hurrying. Lovely family walking group were up ahead of us and we were feeling that desperate urge to beat them that always overtakes us when we meet fellow walkers heading in the same direction as us. They were passing through a gate. Helen's little legs were moving faster than normal. I was taking giant calms with my walking poles working overtime.

"Come on, Rhi!" she said, somewhat breathlessly.

"Alright! Alright!" I gasped.

We reached the gate just behind them and struggled womanfully to look like we weren't rushing at all and as if this kind of athletic pace was the norm for us. I suspect we failed in this attempt at deception as one of the men eyed us sardonically and strode off ahead of the group.

I was relieved to slow down and recover quietly as Helen struck up a conversation about knitting with the lovely woman who had given us the crocheted heart. I love a knitting conversation. She was a far more proficient knitter than I am and worked making 'Knitted Knockers', woollen prostheses for women who had had mastectomies or lumpectomies. Their tag line is 'Made with love, filled with hope'. She told me about her last' boob' which was decorated with crosses of St Andrews for a Scottish woman. Not only can they be more comfortable than the heavier prostheses given to women post op, they can be customised. I think this is marvellous. if you are interested in knitting for them or making a donation this is their website breast prosthesis knitted knockers uk. This moved me so much - women supporting other women in such inventive, heartwarming ways.

We reached a small beach and followed the shoreline: it was beginning to feel like we were on the coastal path proper. We crossed several footbridges looking down on salt marshes and the muddy estuary, passed by farms and ruined farm buildings, using the tall chimney of a nearby aluminium works as a guide. Turning down onto a beach we suddenly felt that we were far away from all these signs of "civilisation" and were heading for the wilds of northern Anglesey. This is what we had been looking forward to during the dark Winter months when we had set about planning our final section of the Wales Coastal Path.

This is the bridge over the Alaw. Thanks to this we didn't have to divert further inland to cross the river at Llanfachraeth. Amusingly, I have just realised I accidentally took a picture of the other group of walkers we had met earlier in the day. They were a fun group of people and the next section saw us cross paths several times.

Once we crossed the bridge we had to walk back towards the sea on the other side. The only guidance we had at that point was to head towards the large chimney of the Aluminium works back on Holyhead. The ground was boggy and I found looking back to fix our bearings a little confusing. Lets be honest here, I'm very easily confused.

Unlike Rhian I found this next section a little dull. That sounds negative but 'dull' isn't always bad. One of the understated joys of long distance is the lack of choice. It is often not that exciting and the process of walking is, at best, repetitive. You just have to put one foot in front of the other. In fact, if it is exciting, it is normally because you have cocked something up or fallen into something unpleasant. If everything is going well you have a choice over where you stop for a cuppa or to eat your lunch and that's about it. And I find this calming. Too much choice leaves me fretful. It is one of the reasons I shop in Lidl and Aldi * (that and the joy of the Aisle of Weirdness). If you want strawberry jam, they have strawberry jam. One type of strawberry jam. I don't have to stand there deciding between Value Jam, Taste the Ripoff or Upper Crust Confiture Handmade by Kitchen Elves.

*Other supermarkets are available if you want to spend more money and support the Kitchen Elves.

Looking back at my photos of this section I can see that, whilst quite pretty, the cliffs are low and it was not spectacular. On the plus side, it was easy going and, like Helen, I enjoy this. There is only so much scrambling, slipping, sweating and swearing I want in a day's walk. To continue the strawberry jam analogy, you have your artisan preserve with all its mindblowing textures, luscious flavours, jewel-bright colour and its higher costs which requires greater expense and savouring, just like walking a bit of spectacular scenery can genuinely uplift your soul while knackering your increasingly decrepit body with its intense ups and downs. Or, rather like today's walk, your average own-brand strawberry jam can be smooth, pleasant and undemanding when you have it on your morning toast. Both are good. This we have learned over the years of experiencing the WCP. Walking is like jam. (But generally less sticky unless there are a lot of wasps. and you tend to attract fewer wasps}

The weather had brightened, the path was easy to follow, the scenery and views across to Snowdonia lovely. We passed the beach at Porth Penrhyn-Mawr, navigated our way through a caravan site and walked along the beach at Porth Trefadog. Thoroughly enjoyable walking and an excellent start to this week's adventure on Anglesey.

The last section to Church Bay was partly on National Trust land. We have found that NT membership has been very useful on our walking of the WCP as parking has often been free (I know, banal reason, but very handy). There is nothing that makes me happier at the start of a walk where we are "bunny-hopping" the cars at either end than finding somewhere free to park. I am a simple soul.

We were, as always, tired by the time we reached Church Bay and we had looked ahead in anticipation to the restaurant and pub that are there and which we caught glimpses of as we neared. On investigation, it turned out that the restaurant was closed that day but it looked very appealing, as did the pub which we resolved to pay a visit to later in the week.

We were also delighted that our accommodation was in the village up at the top of the hill about a mile from the beach so we didn't have far to go to get home, get cleaned up, eat and resume that pool tournament, partially in the hope of actually improving our game and being able to pot the balls we actually intended to.

The night ended with wine and some silly games that the owners of the property had thoughtfully left for their visitors. The day had been excellent, we had only got lost once, neither of us had fallen over, I didn't leave the keys in the car, the weather had been good and we had met some other walkers and I was quite looking forward to meeting up with them on the next section of the walk. We went to bed pleasantly tired and wine lulled. In our happy state we failed to notice the storm clouds forming over the Irish Sea.