South Stack to Trearddur

Today's walk wasn't a neat circular walk from a guidebook (although Rogers volume 2 walk 12 takes in part of the same route). In fact this seven-mile section of the Coastal Path occupies only a page of text in the official guidebook - which is undeserved, when it is an interesting, remote but apparently well-beaten section of the path.

We relied on Coastal Path signs throughout, with no trouble at all here. We noticed that a few of these now also bear a logo for the Wales Coast Path: just as we're nearing completion of this path, a much more ambitious target awaits.

Anyway, from South Stack cafe we followed the path down towards the roadway, then into a field and roadside path that later crossed the road again and took us towards Penrhyn Mawr. Here we saw lots of blue butterflies and hairy caterpillars.

Picture shows Penrhyn Mawr, gorse and heather in the foreground, Llyn to Bardsey on the horizon, encroaching weather front above.

The cliffs here are not so high but very dramatic, the weathering of twisted hard rocks resulting in so many jagged edges, with frequent inlets and gullies worn into features of the rock structure. A tide race was to be seen at Ynysoedd y Ffrydiau (also pictured), with a few fishermen taking advantage at the water's edge.


Going on, we later descended into Porth Dafarch where we had our picnic, as a few children on the sand pretended it was still summer. This beach had a little burger van and a Beach Warden, but public toilets were closed. The path after this alternates between circling headlands and following the road, eventually descending into the more built-up environs of Trearddur.

A striking large house here is Craig y Mor, perched on rocks overlooking the sea. Designed by Dublin architect F. G. Hicks for the Smellie family, this imposing construction was completed in 1921.

We picked a few blackberries here, then just outside the RNLI shop were able to buy an Anglesey ice-cream from a van before walking across the newly-enlarged promenade across the beach, to where we had reached on our South Ynys Cybi walk.

For us, this walk now completes, not just Ynys Cybi, but the whole of the western half of Anglesey's path.