Conwy to Llanfairfechan

There are two alternative routes of the Wales Coast Path between Conwy and Llanfairfechan.  The downside of the one that's closer to the coast is that, after heading around Conwy Morfa, it remains close to the busy A55 to Llanfairfechan. The other route is described in the guidebook as "A superb but more demanding upland walk along the heathery ridge of Conwy Mountain, then rounding Foel Lus and crossing open moorland before descending to Llanfairfechan".  When we were planning the holiday, we were unsure as to which route we'd follow and, in an ideal world, we'd probably have done bits of both. I definitely wanted to go through the town of Penmaenmawr, where I had a holiday job as a teenager, and it would be possible to walk the first part of the upland route and then drop down to Penmaenmawr to join the coastal route there (though beware: links between the two routes are limited both by mountains and by the A55 (North Wales Expressway) which you can only cross when there is a convenient bridge or underpass. 

The weather for our holiday turned out to be not as bad as we'd feared, but there was frequently low cloud on the hills, and I hadn't brought my walking poles with me, so I was a bit anxious about the upland route. Then, on the day when we thought we'd not get any walking at all because of Storm Amy, we managed a short walk out to Conwy Morfa - and it was lovely. That decided the matter; we would follow the coastal route, The whole thing, including most of the sections alongside the A55 actually turned out to be more interesting than I had expected. I'd still like to do at least part of the upland route though; I remember enjoying the hills behind Penmaenmawr on days off from work. The photo, taken in 1975, shows my best friend Janet and another colleague at Druids' Circle, which is on the upland route of the Wales Coast Path.

Returning to 2025: We set off from our cottage in Conwy and, after buying provisions for lunch, followed the same route out of the town that we had taken on the "storm day" earlier in the week.  From the attractive quayside (where the "Smallest House in Great Britain" is located, we headed through the town walls by way of Lower Gate and then took the tarmacked path signposted "Bodlondeb Woods via Marine Walk". This led down to the water front and followed around the coast, with delightful views across the estuary and down the estuary to its mouth; it was lovely. A path led up to the left through Bodlondeb Wood but we kept straight on, eventually heading slightly away from the coast alongside an inlet and past a school. There's a bridge over the inlet but that wasn't our route either, and actually a gate at the end of the bridge was locked. There is a fenced off area over the other side; I wonder if this is the school's sports ground and the bridge leads to it.  Our path led to a minor road where we turned right.*

The walk to this point had felt very peaceful, but we could now hear traffic and our route took us past the western entrance to the A55's tunnel under the estuary; it's an impressive structure, built by an "immersion tube method" and opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1991. Our route then took us past modern houses which back onto Conwy Marina, and a not terribly obvious path between two of the houses led back to the waterfront around the edge of the marina. The marina is also impressive, with lots of expensive-looking boats. Apparently the marina was constructed in the basin where the concrete tubes for the A55 tunnel were cast; all very clever.  We left the recently engineered structures behind for a while and, after passing through a car park, headed out onto Conwy Morfa, with, to our right.  stunning views across the estuary to Deganwy with the Vadre behind.

There was a golf course to our left with good views to Conwy Mountain behind it. The golf course was as far as we'd got on our previous walk this way, before it had started to rain; we'd then retraced our steps to the point marked  * in this description, then continued straight ahead to the main road back to the centre of Conwy. Today, our path gradually followed the coast as it curved away from the estuary to head generally westwards, towards the headland of Penmaenbach (which I think means "little headland of stone", in contrast to Penmaenmawr which is "great headland of stone"; we'd walk around both of them later in today's walk). Nearer at hand, we found ourselves on a path through dunes; to our right was an attractive-looking beach, which is clearly popular with dog walkers. We decided that walking on the beach would be easier than walking on the dunes, so we slithered our way down. We walked along the beach, with the density of dog walkers increasing, then climbed back up through the dunes to a car park and holiday village, and thus a tarmacked access road on which to walk (less scenic, but easier walking!).

We were now approaching Penmaenbach, which inevitably meant we were also approaching both the A55 and the railway line. We crossed over the railway line (which then headed into a tunnel) and emerged onto a tarmacked track which goes around the headland,  mostly alongside the eastbound carriageway of the A55; there is just a short section where the eastbound carriageway is in a tunnel. I remember this road from the journey to Penmaenmawr in the 1970s, when what is now the eastbound carriageway carried traffic heading in both directions; the westbound carriageway now has its own more modern tunnel. Our walk around the headland was surprisingly interesting, with views in all direction.

We were now looking towards the next headland, Penmaenmawr, but first we needed to pass the village of Dwygyfylchi and the town of Penmaenmawr, with the hills along which the upland route travels behind. The famous Synchant Pass is also up there, leading back to Conwy, but there is no direct route across the A55 to Dwygyfylchi from where we were. We continued alongside the dual carriageway, while the railway had reappeared on our right hand side.  We passed the roundabout where traffic leaves the main road for both Dwygyfylchi and Penmaemawr and eventually we crossed the railway and emerged on Penmaenmawr's promenade. Sadly this isn't the same Edwardian promenade that was there in the 1970s; this was lost as a casualty to the construction of the new A55 along the North Wales Expressway in the 1980, and the promenade is now modern. It's not the same!

We left the promenade and the official route of the Wales Coast Path to head up into Penmaenmawr to look for the place where I used to work, which was in a Christian Endeavour Holiday Home in a house called Bryn Hedd.  Happily, after passing under the A55 by an underpass, I soon spotted the familiar route that we used for our walk down to the beach and back every evening, and we found Bryn Hedd without difficulty. The house has been converted to flats, but it looks very much the same as it did, and we were able to take photos of me in front of it. More interestingly, since our holiday I have found out more about the history of the house than I was aware of when I worked there; I knew that Prime Minister William Gladstone loved Penmaenmawr, but I hadn't realised that it was in the house that is now Bryn Hedd (previously called Plas Mariandir),that Gladstone and his wife stayed on their first visit; a family friend loaned the house to them in 1855. 

We were hoping to find a toilet in Penmaenmawr, and so far we hadn't had much luck. We were therefore now looking for a café, in the hope this would both provide a toilet and give us a short break, so we continued back from Bryn Hedd towards and through the town centre rather than returning to the coast path by the direct route. I remembered St Paul's Church, but beyond that I didn't recognise the little town at all, shockingly, I couldn't even have told you that there are cast iron verandahs outside the shops, like in Llandudno. We reached Betty's café, but we weren't sure they had a toilet (they do by the way) and there was a sign saying they only accepted cash payment, which might have stretched us beyond our (cash) means; there was also a sign saying there was a cash point machine further along the road at the Co-Op, but before we got there we passed Penbakes Bakery and Cafe, with an obvious customer toilet, so they got our custom. We enjoyed a cup of coffee then continued along the road. As well as its history as a holiday destination favoured by Gladstone, Penmaenmawr was an important quarrying town, and as we walked along Bangor Road and High Street back towards the A55 to the west of the town centre, we passed quarry workers' cottages with the extensively quarried mountainside above us.

We hadn't been able to work out from the map where our path would go. We knew we wanted the landward side of at least part of the A55, but the road we were walking along only leads to the A55 which then heads almost straight into tunnel and all we could see to the left of this was a steep mountainside! We were therefore relieved when signposts indicated that the official route of the Wales Coast Path had joined the road we were walking along and provided clear onward directions. A slope led up to the left, just before the A55 and the tunnel, but this led to a footbridge sending us back towards the coast, over the westbound carriageway. We descended before the eastbound carriageway, to a ledge up above the road, and continued around the headland of Penmaenmawr with the westbound carriageway of the A55 in a tunnel to our left and the eastbound carriageway out of sight beneath us to the right. We were even up above the tunnels that the eastbound carriageway eventually passes through. The whole thing is an amazing piece of design and engineering. Partway around Penmaenmawr headland we stopped for lunch at a conveniently placed bench. A cyclist on an electric bike stopped for a chat (or maybe we were sitting where he wanted to be!); he was a local who regularly uses this route to visit his daughter. 

Eventually a footbridge took us over the westbound carriageway of the A55, so we were now fully to the  landward side of the main route. We followed minor roads through the outskirts of Llanfairfechan and it was here that our patience got the better of us. We should have continued on the road we were on, but another footbridge over the A55 tempted us across. Unfortunately, it didn't also take us over the railway, so we followed a rough track alongside the railway to emerge by a gate onto Shore Road East, one of the suggested  routes of the Wales Coast Path through Llanfairfechan. We were very soon walking along the pretty promenade, with good views to Anglesey and the Trwyn Du Lighthouse and, closer at hand, some people windfoiling.

If we'd followed the upland route or just taken the higher option through Llanfairfechan, the Wales Coast Path would have brought to down the promenade by way of Station Road and Caradog Place, alongside Afon Llanfairfechan, but we ended up doing the reverse of this; from the promenade we went up Caradog Place and Station Road to Penmaenmawr Road to wait for a number 5 bus back to Conwy. We'd just missed a bus and ours was a bit late, but we weren't in a hurry and the journey back to the cottage was otherwise straightforward. 

Following leg