Llanfairfechan to Menai Suspension Bridge

We stopped off at Popty Bakery for sandwiches and caught the 5D bus from the stop by Conwy Station just before 9 am; the “D” means it travels via Deganwy on its route from Llandudno to Conwy, but that didn’t affect our journey at all. We got off the bus in Llanfairfechan, opposite where we had caught it from yesterday afternoon, and walked back down to the promenade, with its view to the Trwyn Du Lighthouse and Puffin Island. Our route left by way of what is marked on the map as a boating pool, but we soon left the tourist delights of Llanfairfechan behind.

We were following signs to a Nature Reserve and our route took a grassy bank which swept round in an arc, passing a woman sitting on a bench, with two delightful dogs. We had views to attractive mountains on the left, beyond the railway and the North Wales Expressway (the A55); I think this is the Carneddau range and they were with us for much of our walk today. After a slightly unclear bit of signposting, our path headed back to the shore, and soon we came to some natural lakes which were beautiful, with the backdrop of mountains behind. We continued close to the shore, passing some volunteers who were repairing the fence to the left of our path.

Everything was going very smoothly until we were approaching the point where the Afon Aber, the river which comes over the Aber Falls (Rhaeadr Fawr) a few miles inland. We noticed that our path was flooded, so tried to pick our way around to the right. We could see a couple of dogwalkers who were coming the other way, who were also trying to find a way through. They gave up and turned around! This wasn’t a realistic option for us and we found a way though in the end, but we did get wet feet. As we continued, there were more signs of flooding from the river. We caught up with the dogwalkers just before the car park at SH647732 and they told us that they often walk here, but they’d never seen flooding like this before.

Past the car park, the route took a track which headed back to the shore. It was easy walking, though we had to stand right to the side to enable a tractor to come past. The tractor stopped slightly further on and its driver was to be seen inspecting the crop in the adjacent field – and then we realised that the track past this point had disintegrated. We had to scramble down onto a narrow section of pebbles and seaweed, not my favourite sort of walking, but we managed OK and it is probably much easier at low tide.

Back on a better footpath along the coast, there were views to Penrhyn Castle ahead of us. From a distance this does look like a medieval castle, but the current stately home was mostly built in the 19th Century. We began to pass other walkers (including one with very noisy dogs) and we soon  reached the car park at Aber Ogwen. We noticed a picnic table, time to stop for lunch. As we ate, our view of the coast was obscured by a bank, but we noticed a man with a camera with a telephoto lens trained on something on the shore. Inland, I noticed as characteristically-shaped mountain; I think this was Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa). From the car park, we turned left onto a minor road, passing various signs to hides on the Spinnies Aberogwen Nature Reserve and two women asked if we’d been to the Kingfisher Hide.

We’d been slightly puzzled about the correct route from here to Bangor. Both our paper OS map (2024 copyright OS Explorer OL17) and the OS App on my phone show the route going round the coastal side of Penrhyn Castle, but "Official Guide to the Wales Coast Path: North Wales Coast", 3rd ed., 2022, which we’d bought specially for the trip, shows and describes the route as heading inland on roads, initially by continuing along the road we were on now. We’d taken the precaution of  checking on the Wales Coast Path website, which seems pretty up to date, and that too describes the route as going round the coast, so we were reasonably confident that this was the current official route, but we were still somewhat relieved to see a Wales Coast Path sign firmly heading to the right, through the Spinnies reserve. We didn’t stop to visit any of the hides, but we soon returned to a wonderful little cove on the coast where we were greeted by a fisherman and a large number of swans.

A bridge took us over the Afon Ogwen and immediately afterwards a notice told us that our path was open, but work was ongoing so we should be careful. Perhaps that explains the confusion as to route; perhaps the coastal route was closed for a while around 2022 (or maybe it only opened more recently) – the biggest confusion is that none of the sources indicate any uncertainty! Whatever, there was no sign of any ongoing work; we were on a good and well signposted path all the way round (the photo shown to the right or below this text was actually taken towards the end of our circumnavigation of the grounds of Penrhyn Castle).  But I guess we were on National Trust land, and we know how terrified they are that someone might hurt themselves on NT land!

Our route was mostly through woodland, with only occasional glimpses of the sea through the trees; at the northern extremity there were a large number of egrets on a dead tree, but I didn’t manage to photograph them. Meanwhile, Penrhyn Castle was, with one very brief exception, up above us and so out of view. Despite my lack of photos of egrets and Penrhyn Castle from this section, it was a delightful stretch; it would have been a great pity if we’d missed it. We emerged onto a road near Porth Penrhyn (the port where slate from the Penrhyn Quarry near Bethesda was shipped around the world) and soon reached the A5 on the outskirts of Bangor.

We made our way along roads to Garth Pier (also known as Bangor Pier), opened in 1896 by Lord Penrhyn (him again!), threatened with demolishion in in the 1970s when it had fallen into disrepair, but then rescued by Bangor City Council who paid 1p for the pier and reopened it in 1988.  It's a long pier (the 2nd longest in Wales and the 9th in the UK), and the map shows it goes half-way to Anglesey; paddlesteamers from Blackpool and the Isle of Man used to moor at the end. We were initially undecided whether to pay the £1 each to go onto the pier, but the promise of a tea room at the end convinced us.  We walked down to the Pavillion tea room, past some of the Victorian kiosks, some now closed for the season. At the Pavillion, we enjoyed tea/coffee and victoria sponge, but I'm afraid to admit that I'll remember the toilets the most, with a good view down to the sea from between the planks (though I think they have proper plumbing!).

The lie of the land means that you can't see the Menai Suspension Bridge from the shore near the pier, but it is - in principle - just visible from the end of the pier. Or at least, I think it is! The direction of the sun was not helpful, but we thought we could just make the characteristic shape out. We decided to continue a bit further on the Wales Coast Path, with the aim of getting to the Menai Bridge as an end point. There would be buses back to Bangor from there wouldn't there?...We continued on a quiet road up above the white houses you can see on the photograph to the right/below. We then left the shoreline and continued to Upper Bangor, home of much of the University of Bangor. We found ourselves walking past the PJ Hall, where the celebration of Duncan's life had taken place in 2010.

Bangor is a hilly city, and our route headed downhill, back towards the Menai Strait, but the path turned left before entering the Nantporth Nature Reserve, so we didn't actually see the shore.  It was pleasant enough walking through and we noticed a blue Arriva bus on the road up to our  left; that was a good sign and meant we had a way of getting back to the centre of Bangor. We eventually reached the road the bus had been on (Holyhead Road) and turned right. No buses passed us as we walked along Holyhead Road; not quite such good news. We were right above the bridge before we saw it  and soon afterwards we reached the roundabout where you'd turn right to cross the Menai Bridge or turn left to head up to the A55, which crosses the Britannia about a mile further on - and just past the roundabout there was a bus stop. 

We'd reached our destination for today, and that was when the fun and games began. The first thing we noticed was that the bus stop was not in action;  it took us a while to realise that the Menai Suspension Bridge itself was closed. It turned out that the bridge was suddenly closed last Saturday as a result of safety concerns: engineers had found that some bolts on the beams underneath the bridge would need replacing. The bridge partially reopened two days after we were there., but I'm not sure how much difference that would have made, though we could have walked across the bridge and caught a bus that would take us over the Britannia Bridge and so to Bangor. On the day we were there,  we could have walked back to a bus stop we'd passed on Holyhead Road, but only occasional buses pass here. Our best bet was to take the road towards the A55, then cut through on a minor road to Ysbyty Gwynedd (the hospital, though not the one I'd visited as a child; Ysbyty Gwynedd is a more recent replacement, on a different site) and catch the 5C from there. That was what we did; it was a walk of about a kilometre, uphill all the way, but puffing and panting, we did eventually catch a bus.