Blog About Llandudno, North Wales
Here is a little video of a sunset I witnessed on my latest trip to Llandudno, I have been lucky lately in seeing some beautiful sunsets when visiting North Wales! This one I managed to capture the sun just as it was dipping below the horizon, to the sound of birds chirping and gulls crying, and I thought I would add a little Bach as well!
Hope you enjoy this Llandudno sunset as much as I did!
This August I made it back to Llandudno, and spent 3 glorious days out in North Wales, taking a variety of pictures and videos of Llandudno and surrounding areas, including a return visit to Anglesey! Armed with this archive of material I plan to share as much as possible in coming weeks, and begin with some pictures I took during a walk over the Great Orme on Saturday August 18th, 2012.
I had arrived that day and the weather was lovely, although the forecast for the next day was not great. After unloading my stuff in the Westdale guesthouse, I headed off with my camera. Last time I visited Llandudno I had only had my phone camera as both my cameras had broken, but in the meantime I had dug out my video camera, which also takes stills, and decided to brush the dust off it and make some use of it!
I started off by taking some videos of the windfarm off Llandudno Bay as the turbines were sharply visible on the horizon and could be seen turning in the strong offshore winds. I took some photos, and then, in a reverse of my last visit, set off on an evening walk over the Great Orme from the North Shore to the West shore (last time I had done it the other way round in equally lovely weather!).
I walked through the toll gate and began my ascent, and before long I spotted one of the Great Orme’s Kashmiri goats, who always cross my path when I visit Llandudno and wander over the Orme! I got some great shots of them, including a video of one of them leaping over a dry stone wall when a car approached! I was passed by some girls with scouse accents who asked me if I had seen the seals, I said I hadn’t as I had been focused on the goats, they said they had seen dolphins in the waters the night before. They jogged on and I passed a pair of climbers, one of whom was getting quite cross with his climb and swore at his equipment, the chap holding his rope below apologised but I just smiled and wandered on.
The walk across the Great Orme is very deceptive and I realised I was less than half way when the sun was beginning to get low in the sky. This presented a great opportunity to see the skies darken, and witness a beautiful Llandudno sunset, so I took plenty of shots as well as just enjoying the view, as the sun began to go down, and watched as it spectacularly lit up the clouds, setting fire to the sky and burnishing the heavens with a beautiful glow.
As the skies darkened further, I passed millionaire’s row on the Great Orme and was able to capture some landscape photos with out buildings providng relief, as well as the natural contours and shapes of the Orme itself. I kept snapping until my camera could barely get enough light to function, but I ended up with some rather magnificent shots of the Llandudno skies filled with fire as the sun backlit the clouds and I feasted on some beautiful views of the slowly dying day against the backdrop the the Great Orme, a place where I always find myself totally at peace with myself and everything around me.
I hope you enjoy the pictures of red Llandudno skies taken from the Great Orme. Do comment if you like them, and thanks for reading. I hope to update with some more pictures and videos of Llandudno soon!
It’s been a long time! Had a lot of stuff going on for me, last year I ended up in a long distance relationship so ended up spending most of my summer hopping back and forth to the south coast of England near Brighton, but that is over now, and having also come to the end of a university course, it was time for a trip to my beloved Llandudno!
I felt a frisson of excitement as I began to see familiar sites from the train, and when I stepped off it was like a homecoming. Very little seemed to have changed, although the Alice In Wonderland sculptures caught my eye immediately as interesting new additions.
I was staying at the lovely Westdale, just away from the main tourist bustle of the promenade hotel area, and really enjoyed the experience there as the owner is very kind. I had several daytrips during my stay, taking advantage of the Red Rover bus ticket, and visited Bangor and Caernarfon, as well as a wild mystery tour of Anglesey where I ended up in Holyhead. Unlike with Llandudno, the minute I stepped foot there I wanted to leave, although this might have been as much to do with the fact I had a 2.5 hour bus ride back, as the fact that I didn’t really warm to the place. But I did spot some places to explore on a future trip, and enjoyed passing over the Menai Bridge and going through llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch! Maybe I will stop there next time.
In the meantime I got back to Llandudno for 2 lovely evening walks along the west shore, probably my favourite place in the whole world, where I enjoyed some beautiful Llandudno sunsets and also spotted some unusual cloud formations. Both my cameras recently broke, so I was making do with a rather poor quality basic camera phone, but the pictures didn’t turn out all that bad, really!
It’s been a while since I’ve been able to get to my favourite resort but am hoping to sometime in 2011. For this reason I’ve not been able to update this blog much with stories of my adventures, but I thought I’d share a view videos of Llandudno that I’ve found in various places – for example this very well done video which shows a lot of the sights of Llandudno on a gorgeous sunny day – just how it’s meant to be experienced (though I’ve experienced every extreme of weather on my travels there!) Enjoy this video and I hope to post more soon!
I’ve dug out a few more pictures I took on this year’s only trip to Llandudno. These ones are of the West shore – it was a very misty day, but as my walk progressed the sun burned away some of the mist, and it ended up being very clear for a while.
This is just a test gallery while I sort something out, but hope you like the pics anyway!
As promised, I have had a look through the pictures I took on my recent trip to Llandudno, and chosen a few to make a small gallery. I hope to blog a little bit more about some of the scenes depicted in more detail in coming weeks, as there is lots to write about what was a very enjoyable (but also a bit disastrous!) weekend in my favourite little place on the coast!
It seems a distant memory now – so thanks be to digital cameras, as I have plenty of snapshots to look back on as the memories grow colder, and am delighted to be able to share these images as I know readers are very fond of Llandudno too, and it is nice to share one’s appreciation of a place and its people and attractions 🙂
Oops! One thing I have noticed it is very easy to do, is start blogs and websites, and then find that a few months have gone by without adding anything! Mind you, I do run a lot of websites (as part of my business), so I hope fellow Llandudno fans can forgive me for letting this blog lapse a little – despite the fact I visited Llandudno a couple of months ago, and have just got back from the most glorious, sunny weekend there (and in Betws-y-Coed) – which has prompted me to get the dust off my Llandudno blog and start to make some use of the material I have archived, together with fresh material – this weekend I took around 500 photos, and about half an hour’s worth of video clips.
I will begin with this weekend’s visit, although I do have some interesting material from my visit in April, which I will hopefully cover in due course. This trip had something of everything – sun, sunsets, beach walks, boat rides, bus rides, cable car rides, walks, fireworks on the beach and even a set of bruised ribs!
Life has been pretty hectic for me of late (I have trouble remembering when it wasn’t!) so a trip to Llandudno seemed just the remedy. I pulled in to Llandudno train station from Manchester (or Manceinion as the Welsh describe it) at about 2.30 on Friday June 6th, 2008, and the weather was lovely and sunny, so much so I had to buy a baseball cap to keep my head unburned until I could unpack my sun hat! So I checked into the lovely Seaclyffe Hotel, unpacked, and was off – in fact at that point I decided to jump on a bus to venture out to Colwyn bay, as I fancied a walk on the beach there, having seen the beach front and promenade so many times from the train en route and on the way out of Llandudno. The beauty of Llandudno is that there are so many beautiful places within easy reach, as well as the joys of Llandudno itself!
So I got there and found Colwyn Bay beach, and had a lovely walk, looking out to sea and watching the people walking their dogs. Later on, as I waited for the bus, there was a crazy altercation between some locals outside a pub, which thankfully didn’t develop into a full blown fight! Anyway, it was back to Llandudno, where I made my way to the West shore to watch the sunset – and a spectacular and beautiful West shore sunset it was!
Saturday I rose early, and after gathering provisions, I headed off to Betws-y-Coed, a place I always like to visit if I can – the weather looked promising, and I reckoned if I was going to visit again, I had better do it on the Saturday rather than be at the mercy of Sunday trains! In any case, I got there, and because I had started to develop sore feet (due to running a lot lately), I didn’t get as far as I had envisaged, although I did enjoy a meal at the Swallow Falls cafe, and enjoyed an intriguing walk – I thought I was venturing out into the middle of nowhere, after crossing a bridge a few miles down from Swallow Falls, and heading into thick forest, I headed down a hill and came to a nice picnic area, then climbed over a stile and followed a river until I ended up back at the small waterfall down from Swallow falls – a round trip! Later on I started to feel a little unwell, so headed back down into Betws-y-Coed, and had a wander through the little park next to the Pont-y-Pair bridge. I saw a notice nailed to a tree and a stile, which I thought looked quite familar, and was struck with the similarity between it and my earlier surroundings – then it clicked that it was the same place, and somehow my long walk into the wilderness had in fact led me right back into the middle of Betws-y-Coed!
I headed back into Llandudno, where I took a walk along the promenade, and noticed some police tape out on the sand, and also at the edge of the promenade. It became apparent that a fireworks display was in the offing, so I decided to stay out and watch. It grew dark, and I saw the Chap in his boiler suit (with “Celebration Displays” across the back) run into the St George’s Hotel (the first hotel to be built on Llandudno Promenade back in 1854!) and then run back out, and watched as he donned his safety wadding and helmet.
Then I watched as smartly dressed guests filed out of the hotel – so I assumed they were holding a wedding reception, and this was to be their fireworks display! So off we went with fireworks, to end a lovely day, as multicoloured explosions echoed off the pebbles and buildings and lit up the night sky. Whoevers wedding it was, congratulations – I wish you well – and if it was your wedding fireworks display, why not post a comment and let us know!
My second day was so packed full of activities, I hope to post more about each in more details in coming days – but for now offer a summary! What a glorious sunny summer’s day it was – just the kind of day Llandudno was made for. I started with a soya caramel latte in Costa over on the retail park, and ended up watching the sky darken over the great Orme. In between, I enjoyed Codman’s Punch and Judy, the official tour on the bus, rides on Gorgeous Gussie and a speedboat (jumping into which I hit my left ribs with all my weight, and it still hurts…), and then headed up on to the Orme via the Cable Car, which I had never been on before! What an eerily silent experience that was, like floating through the air! Except when the car went past the support poles, which made quite a racket!
In any case, I enjoyed a Coffee in the Captain’s Table, before dozing in the sun for an hour, then headed off around the Orme, returning to town via Happy Valley (not before finding my old friends the Kashmiri goats once again!). Almost exhausted, I spent another couple of hours wandering around the beach, and taking photographs as the sky turned a lovely shade of flushed pink, and those plaintive seagull cries marked the end of my last evening in Llandundo – until the next time.
I’ve interspersed a few photos of Llandudno here in the blog post – have only just got back, so when I’ve done more sorting of the pictures, I will make another gallery with higher resolution photos 🙂
Last time I took a look at the Great Orme goats, and the Great Orme really is a place teeming with life of all kinds. However, it is also a place where we may expect to find marks of the dead (indeed the entire being of the Orme, limestone, owes its existence to the millions of sea creatures which eventually turned into the stone of which it is comprised!). The Orme was an ideal, defensible place for ancient tribes, and the remains of stone circles, settlements, wells, and burial sites can be found from Stone Age times. Perhaps most impressive among these is the Great Orme Cromlech, the remains of a neolithic burial chamber.
I had been wanting to see this Cromlech since I had visited Wales’s largest burial site, Tinkinswood in South Wales, earlier that summer. I’ve never been one for maps – I prefer to just explore, so on my first trip to Llandudno and the Orme, I had failed to find the Cromlech! However, on my second trip, in October 2006, I was to strike lucky.
The day I arrived I had witnessed a very lovely sunset on the West Shore, and the weather was incredibly mild and pleasant for mid October. In fact the next day, the 13th, was like a perfect midsummer’s day, so warm I had to remove my coat as I hopped off the tram at the half way station, and set off for more exploration. I first wandered over to St Tudno’s Church and the graveyard, my camera in hand before I realised the graveyard was fully functioning – as evidenced by recent flowers and a pair of gravediggers! In any case, I had a look around, and saw one of the great Orme wardens unloading stuff from one of the vans I see roaming over the Orme. He was a very pleasant Kenyan chap, and when I asked him where the Cromlech was, he told me, then kindly offered to give me a lift as he was going over that way. So off we went, and I found out he was a student from Kenya on work experience for his conservation degree – wherever he is now, I wish him well! Anyway, he dropped me off at the end of Cromlech Road (that would be the one!) and I walked down, climbed over the wall, and beheld the Cromlech at last!
Here are some of my
pictures of the Great Orme Cromlech and I was also inspired to write a poem about my experience there, for it was a quiet, summer’s day, insects were buzzing, and I sat down and quietly reflected about the people who had built the tomb, and what there lives and deaths may have been like. It’s here at my poetry blog, but depends if you have a taste for poetry or not (although there are a few more poems about Llandudno there too, which I will mention in due course) 🙂
None of my visits to Llandudno would have been complete without a wander over The Great Orme (although before some very upsetting life events took over, I had taken to exploring further afield, around Snowdonia and Betws-y-Coed) – and every time I wandered the Orme, the Great Orme goats would find me, one way or the other! I remember fondly being followed down the steps beside the Llandudno ski centre, towards Happy Valley, on my last visit, I think a couple of kids mistakenly assumed I was their mother for a few moments 🙂
So this is the first of my Llandudno videos, hopefully I will be able to post lots more videos from my archives, as I did take some footage on previous trips. I also hope to be able to make some day trips to Llandudno this spring, although staying over is at the moment unfortunately not a real option (although who knows). Anyway, I hope this little video of the Great Orme Kashmiri Goats of Llandudno is of interest. I certainly hope to see them again soon, and perhaps take some more photos and videos of Llandudno and the places and things there that have become special to me.
The goats are one of the big wildlife attractions of Llandudno, and the following sites have some more information about these fascinating and admirable animals:
http://www.llandudno.com/goats.html
http://www.conwy.gov.uk/doc.asp?cat=1912&doc=1666
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/348432
The following clips were taking in early spring, 2007