Yahoo News The secrets of North Wales: There's more to this region than Snowdon and crowded beaches
In early 2020, my travel goals included a trek to Everest Base Camp, until a certain virus scuppered my plans, and I pledged to stay closer to home, experiencing activities and places I’d somewhat snobbishly written until now. First up? A weekend in Wales, in a static caravan on Haven Holidays’ Hafan y Môr site. The appeal was two-fold. For years I’d wanted to return to North Wales (which I visited once as a child), although I was keen to explore beyond its biggest crowd-pullers. My post-lockdown eagerness to escape was tempered by the knowledge I wouldn’t be the only one heading to North Wales in August; hotel prices were soaring and crowds seemed inevitable. A static caravan seemed like the perfect solution for my husband and I.
Friends commented that it was an unusual choice for a childless couple. But although there’s a water park, adventure playground and plenty of cheesy entertainment at Hafan y Môr, there are also wildflower-filled gardens and direct access to both the Wales Coast Path and a rockpool-dotted beach. On-site restaurants include a Papa Johns, but there’s also the Coast House, with its quinoa burgers and fragrant Sri Lankan curries. For self-caterers, Hafan y Môr’s mini-markets sell everything required for a weekend away – namely my favourite prosecco.
Perks of our caravan, with its huge kitchen and living room, extend beyond the Bluetooth sound system and patio overlooking a heron-dotted pond. We designate two spare bedrooms as his n’ hers walk-in wardrobes, providing more space to relax, and less time performing the dreaded static-caravan-shuffle perfected during childhood holidays. And at just £310 for a four-night break, it’s significantly cheaper than a hotel.
It’s also a brilliant base, providing easy access to North Wales’ lesser-known attractions. Having summitted Snowdon years ago, we start with a journey through Snowdonia National Park on the Ffestiniog Railway, clambering into beautifully-restored carriages at Porthmadog harbour for a steam-spewing rumble through mountain tunnels towards Tan y Bwlch station. Opened in 1836, it’s the world’s oldest narrow gauge railway; get lucky and you’ll ride in the carriage used by David Lloyd George, who worked in Blaenau Ffestiniog.
There are more surprises at the nearby Sygun Copper Mine, where a maze of tight tunnels leads me along the copper seam twisting through the mine, which was abandoned in 1903. In the small museum, chunks of neon-green malachite hacked from nearby hillsides sit alongside a 71 million-year-old dinosaur egg found in China.
Post-lockdown, Barry Island became Wales’ Bournemouth, with police called in to restore calm to crowded beaches. Luckily, there’s no such shortage of sand in North Wales. In Abersoch, we summit crowd-free golden dunes before exploring the village’s high street, dodging locals strutting towards the beach, surfboards under arms. At Kin & Co, a craft shop and café where art-like displays of yarn balls tower over homemade brownies, owner Charlotte Kernain reveals that although indoor dining is now possible, she’ll stick to takeaway for now. I can’t blame her – who would dine indoors with such a fabulous backdrop?
Caernarfon is merely a town we’re driving through, until we pull into Castle Square, dominated by a 700-year-old fortress. Huge sections of ancient town walls scatter its centre, towering over crooked lanes lined with gabled houses. My favourite find is Northgate Street, formerly known as Stryd Pedwar a Chwech. Once the heart of Caernarfon’s red light district, its Welsh name translates as Four and Six – the number of shillings sailors would need for a package which included a room, a bottle of gin and a prostitute.
It doesn’t seem right to visit Snowdonia without stopping in Llanberis, the village huddling at the foot of Mount Snowdon, and the departure point for its famous railway. We swap the railway for Llanberis’s often overlooked Padarn Country Park, at the base of Elidir Fawr mountain, one side of which became Dinorwic slate quarry – the second largest in the world, until it closed in 1969. Today, visitors can ride restored steam trains along the route taken by slate wagons. In the National Slate Museum, reopening on August 23, there are original forges and foundries to explore.
Still to be confirmed is the official reopening date for the Quarry Hospital Museum, where gruesome injuries were tended to and where Wales’ first X-ray was taken, in 1898. There are wheeled stretchers designed to slot into the mine’s railway tracks, and surgical implements resembling medieval torture devices. The presence of a post-mortem table (made of slate) suggests the prognosis wasn’t always good.
Our final stop is a reminder that there’s so much more to North Wales than Snowdon. Portmeirion is a beautiful, Italianate-style holiday village designed by Welsh architect Clough Williams-Ellis in 1925. It’s a trippy tribute to Williams-Ellis’s beloved Portofino, albeit on Gwynedd’s rugged coastline. There are pastel-hued villas, trees shipped from the Himalayas and a statue depicting a lion chomping on a naked man’s arm. A “3D soundscape” created by Martyn Ware, who founded Heaven 17 and The Human League, does little to make sense of it all, but that’s okay. All I know is that North Wales makes Everest Base Camp look rather boring.
A four-night break in one of Haven Holidays’ Prestige three-bedroom caravans (which sleep up to eight) at the Hafan y Môr property costs £267 (0333 202 5250; haven.com).
