Tuesday 21st August – Wow North Wales, you are beautiful

Look what I woke up too!

After a leisurely morning in site, checking out the other facilities and buying a Wi-Fi voucher, I took a look at the map book to plan my day. I knew I wanted to stay close to the coast and not ‘visit’ an attraction, just see a few places, so decided to head towards Llandudno first.

I drove in to the town centre first and to be honest only saw a town centre – shops I could visit at home and hordes of tourists. I was contemplating finding a car park and taking a look around to see if I could find any history or museums, when I spotted a sign for a ‘scenic route’. Instant change of plan, I was going that way. And thank goodness I did!

Suddenly I was paying a £3 toll to make my way up the coastal road from Llandudno to Great Ormes Head and seeing scenery like this…

It was quite a tricky road to drive at points as it went down to single lanes as you made your way up very steep hills with very tight corners – felt a bit like the race track in Monaco that is so famous (Ok, not quite).

I came across a small church on the way up, which I found out was originally built by a Welsh monk in the 6th century called St Tudno, who Llandudno is named after. The current building dates back to the 12^th century. It was enlarged in the 15^th century and re roofed and repaired in 1885. There is a pulpit in the churchyard and they hold regular outside services (you can see this in the photo below).

Back in my car and further on up the hill I came to the ‘Summit’, the top of the Great Orme, 207 metres (679 feet) above the sea. From here I could see across the sea to the Isle of Man and the Lake District.

There is a café, museum and play park, but originally the summit complex started as a telegraph station, built by Liverpool Dock Trustees in 1840, to transmit signals from Liverpool to Holyhead. The keeper of the station and his wife were very hospitable and set a room aside to provide tea, lemonade and soda water to visitors during the summer.

The Telegraph Inn was popular and work begun on a hotel with accommodation for 30 people in 1903. During WW!! The RAF used the hotel as a radar station but now it is a welcoming café again.

There is also a tram station that takes you up and down a short distance of the hill and cable cars that are open all year, but there is a ski centre up there too for when it is snowy.

After walking around for a while, it was back in the car to make the long trip back down the hill. I stopped at a beautiful viewpoint where I made a new friend. I named her Stephanie 🙂

I also learnt a little history here of course! It is from around the point I was standing that German Officers, who were POW in a nearby camp, tried to rendezvous  with a submarine! If fortune favours the brave, then these three officers surely deserved a bit of luck. They had managed to break out of the remote Dyffryn Aled internment camp near Llansannan, and had marched overnight a full twenty miles to Llandudno.

Now they simply needed to rendezvous with the U-boat (UB38) which they had arranged via coded letters back to Germany. The plan was to be picked up by a dinghy sent out from the U-Boat U38, which would be waiting near the Great Orme’s head. Straightforward in theory, in practice this would be extremely difficult. The Germans had no idea of how to get down to the rocky shore, and their only means of signalling to the waiting U-Boat was a small electric torch, which they planned to wave in a circle.

By day they waited in bushes; by night they frantically tried to signal their position, even lighting a bonfire at one stage. But after two nights they had no option but to give up, and were soon arrested and returned to prison camp. It was only years later that they learnt the fatal flaw in the plan: due to a certain laxness in the Welsh coastal defences, the U-Boat was able to come in much closer to the shore than they had envisaged. As a result, the men’s frantic signals were obscured by the rocky coastline!

(Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02409lh)

I wound my way down the hill and decided that my next stop would be a little further around the coast to Bangor, which is the oldest city in Wales and one of the smallest in the United Kingdom. It’s also where the singer Duffy (Remember, Begging you for Mercy?) is from!

I was hoping for lots of historic building, but to be honest was a little disappointed. It was again, a city centre with shops and I walked to the furthest point to see the sea, and look across to the island of Anglesey. I think that’s somewhere I will visit in the future.

I walked back to my car (forgot to say, free parking as a lovely Gent gave me his ticket with an hour and a half still on it!) and headed back towards the campsite with a stop at Tesco on the way to pick up some food.

Another relaxing evening at the campsite, even managed a bit of sunbathing just outside my can. It’s pretty windy tonight, so trying not to think about the fact that I am on a hill near (though not that near) to the edge of a cliff! Wish me luck!