Year: 2025

Our 2025 holiday: Beaumaris Castle

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A photo of the outside of Beaumaris Castle on Anglesey including its moat

We spent a day of our holiday on the island of Anglesey, starting at the north east corner with Beaumaris Castle. You could be forgiven for thinking that Beaumaris Castle is now a ruin, but in reality it was never actually finished.

It was commissioned by Edward I of England in the late 13th Century, along with Conwy Castle, Caernarfon and Harlech, and was supposed to be the biggest and grandest of them all. However, the money ran out, and construction basically stopped in the 1320s. The towers were never as tall as planned, but what remains today is still a large castle with multiple fortified walls. Nowadays, as with Conwy, it’s in the care of Cadw. Despite being built by an English king in Wales, ‘Beaumaris’ is derived from the French ‘beaux marais’, or ‘fair marsh’.

Visitors can climb up onto the walls, and up some of the towers, to get a view across the Menai Strait and towards mainland Wales. There’s also a video history of the castle, and the chapel has been restored with new stained glass windows. The outer walls are enclosed by a proper water-filled moat, and whilst it was never completed, it’s still a formidable castle. It’s worth a 1-2 hour visit.

Accessibility

As you would expect from something built over 800 years ago, accessibility isn’t the best. Access to the walls and towers is by staircases only, but there’s flat access to many other parts of the castle, albeit mostly on grass or gravel surfaces.

The castle is in the centre of the town of Beaumaris, which doesn’t have a railway station (and indeed never has) but is served by regular bus services. There’s an official castle car park just to the north, but we parked in a pay and display car park at a nearby leisure centre, that was a similar distance walk away. The leisure centre car park has two medium-speed (7 kW AC) electric car chargers on the PodPoint network.

Nearby

We didn’t spend much time in the town of Beaumaris, but it looked quite nice for a bit of pottering around. There’s a pier, and a large sightseeing Ferris wheel was there when we visited.

Some thoughts on the state of public electric car charging in 2025

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A photo of my Nissan Leaf, with the car charging port open and a Type 2 cable plugged in.

So we’re about a month into owning an electric car, and in that time we’ve taken it on two long distance trips – our holiday in Wales, and to the Midlands and Oxfordshire for a family birthday. As our Nissan Leaf only has a 150 mile range on a full charge, we were therefore reliant on public chargers to be able to continue our journeys. This post is therefore some collected thoughts on our experiences, in case you are thinking about switching to an electric car.

Availability of charging bays

Across the UK, there are almost 42,000 places you can charge an electric car, according to ZapMap, with each location offering an average of two chargers and three connectors. However, sometimes you would encounter a charger with two bays, for two cars – but the charging machine could only charge one car at a time. This was a particular problem with the faster ‘Rapid’ chargers. There were a couple of occasions where we arrived at a charger, and could plug in a cable, but would have to wait because another vehicle was already charging.

Other times, we would get there and all the chargers would have been taken. On the way back from Wales, we visited Chester Zoo, which I’ll blog about later in the summer. There are 26 charging bays available, but on a summer Saturday in August, all were taken by the time we arrived at 10:30am. Thankfully, I could check their availability on an app, and was able to move our car around when one had become free around lunchtime.

There is a degree of etiquette when it comes to charging a car. For example, if your car has finished charging, then, if you can, it’s best to go back to it and move it to a standard space to free it up for someone else to use. Also, don’t hog a rapid charger if there’s a slower charger available that you have the time to use.

So far, we’ve not encountered a charging bay being ‘iced’, as in occupied by a standard petrol or diesel car with an internal combustion engine (ICE).

Only slower chargers available

Many public chargers are 7 kW ‘medium’ speed chargers. A full charge on one of these would take about six hours for our Nissan Leaf, and likely much longer for those with much bigger batteries. These chargers are fine for ‘destination charging’ – for example, at Portmeirion, where we were intending to stay for the whole day anyway. But they’re no good for a quick charge to continue a journey.

This problem will get better in time as more rapid and ‘ultra-rapid’ DC chargers are installed.

CHAdeMO, or the lack thereof

Our Nissan Leaf can charge from three types of plug:

  • Standard 3 pin plugs at around 2 kW for a slow charge
  • Type 2 plugs at around 7 kW for a medium charge
  • CHAdeMO plugs, for a rapid charge of around 40 kW

CHAdeMO is a Japanese standard, and a number of Japanese cars of a similar age to our Nissan Leaf were built with these sockets and sold worldwide. But it’s not the European standard for fast charging, which is CCS2. CCS2 looks similar to the type 2 socket, but with an extra bit on, and it’s DC rather than AC. We can’t use CCS2 chargers without buying a converter, and they’re expensive – at least £600.

A lot of rapid chargers will just have one or two CHAdeMO plugs. A good example was Northampton services on the M1, where a bank of 12 rapid CCS2 chargers have been installed, but only one CHAdeMO charger. Which, predictably, was already occupied by another Nissan Leaf. Thankfully, we managed to find somewhere else to charge.

I get the point that barely any new electric vehicles are being built with CHAdeMO connectors, but for those of us with such cars, it can be a pain when they’re not available.

All the apps

Public car charging apps are a bit like car parking apps, in that you may well end up with several of them installed. Early on, many public chargers could only be used using an app – I remember talking to someone who was a very early electric vehicle adopter, who said that having all the apps was the worst thing about it. Thankfully, many public chargers offer contactless payments with a credit card, which is much easier. And some accept an RFID card, which you can order from several places that you then link to a payment method. We’ve got one from Octopus Energy, which works most of the time, but not always.

But some still require you to download an app, sign up for an account, link a payment method and then start charging. The worst of these, in my view, is Pod Point, where you also have to top-up a balance before you charge. That means estimating how much you’re going to need to pay before charging, and then having any money left over held in a Pod Point account. Unfortunately, Pod Point are one of the bigger operators, having partnered with Tesco.

The other issue with apps is phone reception. We managed in Wales, but had we not had a signal, there would have been some places where we wouldn’t have been able to use the chargers.

No chargers where you need them

I mentioned ‘destination charging’ above, giving good examples of Portmeirion and Chester Zoo that allow visitors to charge whilst they’re there. This is one of the key advantages of having an electric car, in that you can charge at somewhere you were planning to stop at anyway, rather than taking a detour to a petrol station.

But not all ‘destinations’ have charging. Whilst in the Midlands, we visited Cadbury World, which doesn’t yet allow its visitors to charge their cars. Which was a shame, although we did find a rapid public charger at an art-deco McDonald’s in King’s Norton.

Thankfully, it looks like more places are investing in charging infrastructure for their visitors. The National Trust, where possible, is installing chargers at many of its properties. And they’re potentially another income source for these attractions. Whilst some may offer free charging, as an incentive, most electric car drivers do expect to pay to charge. So whilst there is the upfront cost of installing electric car charging infrastructure, and then maintaining it, in the long run it could make a good return on investment.

Broken infrastructre

At home, our nearest rapid charger is a short walk away. But it’s been out of order for months, and we’ve seen a number of public chargers that were broken on our travels. This particular charger is in a local authority car park, and I understand that the council got funding to install it, but not maintain it. And last weekend, when we needed to use a rapid charger in Congleton in Cheshire, all of them across the whole town were faulty.

I wouldn’t say faulty chargers are a widespread problem, and most mapping tools for finding public chargers will indicate whether chargers are faulty if they have this data. That should reduce the risk of arriving at a charger with only a few watt-hours to spare, to find it’s out of order.

Charging at home is (almost) always cheaper

Electric cars make the most sense when you can charge them at home. Your home electric supply will (almost) always be cheaper than using a public charger. We’re on a fixed electricity tariff with Octopus, where we pay 20p per kWh. And that assumes that we’re charging overnight, without any contribution from our solar panels.

By contrast, even the cheapest public chargers are usually more than double that. Rapid chargers, especially those at motorway service stations, cost even more – typically 88p per kWh, so more than four times more expensive than charging at home. Part of the reason for this is that public chargers must charge you a higher rate of VAT. At home, your electicity bill has VAT at 5%, but public chargers have to charge 20% VAT.

If you need to use a public charger to top up your charge to get home, then it’s worth calculating how much you need to charge to get home. That way, you only need to charge your car by that much (plus maybe a bit extra) to get home, where the rest of the charge can be done more cheaply.

I say ‘almost’ always cheaper because you may get lucky, and find a free public charger. There aren’t many, but we came across two in Wales. Admittedly, one was a 3-pin plug, offering a very slow charge, and the other was a medium speed 7 kW charger. But still, it’s free electricity, and as we were away and reliant on public chargers, it was very welcome.

Our 2025 holiday: Portmeirion

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A photo of the village of Portmeirion in North Wales

Our next day trip on holiday was to the village of Portmeirion. This was a little further away; though still in North Wales, it’s not along the north coast but instead further south, near Portmadog. The village was built gradually over 50 years between 1925 and 1975, and is designed to look like a Mediterrean port village, but on a small scale. So, unlike most of the local architecture, the buildings are brightly coloured, with lots of tropical planting.

It has always been designed to be a tourist attraction, and many of the buildings are available as holiday cottages. There’s also a range of gift shops and cafés, and some formal gardens and woodland.

Another view of the village of Portmeirion

All of us had been before, including our nine-year-old, although they were only two on their previous visit. I think they liked the smaller scale of it, and that there’s lots of little nooks and crannies to explore. Over the years, it’s been a popular filming location, and many of the buildings are now listed as heritage assets. The pottery brand Portmeirion takes its name from the village, and yes, there’s a pottery factory shop in the village.

Even though the weather was quite dull when we visited, I still took plenty of photos as it’s so picturesque.

Accessibility

Portmeirion is quite expensive, at £20 for an adult day ticket (at the time of writing). However, you can easily spend the whole day here – especially if you head off on the various walks. Being located on a hill side, with the car parks at the top, means it may be hard work for those with mobility issues. Whilst there are steps in places, there are usually alternative ramped routes available.

There is a large car park at the top, with 10 electric car charging points offering medium-speed 7kW AC output (Type 2), on the Monta network. At the time of our visit, we paid 60p per kWh to charge. Some of the charge points were out of order, however.

The nearest railway station is Minffordd, which is on the Cambrian Coast Line with trains from Birmingham, and the narrow-gauge Ffestiniog Steam Railway. This is also where the nearest bus stop is. There’s then a 1 1/2 mile walk to Portmeirion.

A narrow gauge steam locomotive called Linda at Portmadog Harbour station on the Ffestiniog Railway

Also nearby

After visiting Portmeirion, we went to Porthmadog, which is the terminus for both the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland narrow gauge steam railways. We didn’t have time for a journey – a return trip on the Welsh Highland Railway to Caernarfon and back takes most of the day – but we did watch a couple of trains departing and visited the shop.

How we handled poor phone reception

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A photo taken atop the Great Orme in Wales

Our holiday in Wales was good, but we didn’t always have good phone reception whilst we were there. Now, it’s a holiday, and you can argue that we probably should have had a break from phones, social media and the like. But we also need our phones for certain things – I use Google Maps for navigation, for example, and we needed apps to find out where to charge our electric car.

In North Wales, most of the population is concentrated in a relatively narrow strip of land between the hills and the north coast. Providing a mobile service is therefore more difficult and expensive – each mast is likely to cover a smaller and more sparsely populated area than in a big city. For the most part, there were few places where we had no signal whatsoever. But even when showing full bars, we couldn’t make calls or use the internet in some places.

Here’s how we handled it:

Downloading things on Wi-Fi beforehand

It’s a bit hidden, but Google Maps lets you download offline maps on a Wi-Fi connection. We had good internet where we were staying – the Conwy area has been upgraded to full fibre broadband – so we could download a map of the area. This meant that we could still use Google Maps to navigate without a mobile data connection.

Note that Google’s guide, linked above, is a little out of date. At the time of writing, you need to:

  1. Search for a place
  2. Swipe right on the lower panel where it says ‘Directions’ and ‘Start’, until you see a button that says ‘More’
  3. Tap ‘More’ and then ‘Download Offline Map’
  4. You can then pinch and zoom to select the area – a larger area will take up more storage space

There are limitations – you won’t get live traffic data if you’re using an offline map without a phone signal. However, once Google Maps is able to reconnect, it’ll update your route if needed. If you use Gmail and sign in to Google Maps with the same account, you may get push notifications ahead of upcoming trips to prompt you to download offline maps. I’d recommend it, especially if it’s somewhere you’ve not been before, or somewhere particularly remote.

The same applies for content that you want to consume whilst outside of mobile data range. If you use Spotify Premium, you can download playlists ahead of time. I make sure that I download, rather than stream, any shows on BBC Sounds that I want to listen to.

Hotspotting where possible

If there’s free Wi-Fi available somewhere that you’re visiting, use it. Most National Trust properties have free Wi-Fi in their cafés, for example.

If you have another device on a different phone network, then you could try hotspotting off that too. My phone is on 3, but my iPad has a mobile data SIM on a virtual operator which uses EE. Whilst it was a bit of a pain to have to carry my iPad around as well, it meant I could use the iPad as a Personal Hotspot for my phone and get online. You may be able to do this with a newer car, if you have a data plan on it, or a portable Wi-Fi hotspot device.

Get an eSIM on a different network

When I’ve travelled abroad, I’ve used eSIMs from Airalo rather than roaming on my existing SIM, as it’s cheaper. But you can buy UK eSIMs too. If your primary SIM has poor signal, then you could buy an eSIM on a different network that may work better. My iPhone (and I assume most new-ish Android phones) can switch between multiple SIMs on the fly, if one loses signal. If you decide to buy from Airalo, use the code NEIL6715 for some extra initial credit.

If you want to go further, try Honest Mobile’s Smart SIM. This can connect to all four UK networks (3, Vodafone, O2 and EE, although 3 and Vodafone may merge their networks soon), and costs £45 per year. However, whilst there are no data limits, it is limited to set pre-approved apps. These are mainly navigation apps like Google Maps, messaging, news, weather, banking and apps for electric car parking. There’s about 400 in total, but it excludes any social media apps, or any that involve streaming audio or video. I signed up to Honest Mobile after coming back from Wales, and I’m giving it a try for a year to see how I get on. Here’s my referral link if you want your first month free.

Honest Mobile’s Smart SIM has been heavily advertised on my Facebook feed, and so I read this post by Martin Brophy before committing.

Ultimately, what works for you will depend on how often you’re without a mobile signal, and how much you rely on your phone. I normally get a good signal on 3 in most places, but I’ll see how I get on with Honest Mobile.

Our 2025 Holiday: Llandudno & The Great Orme

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A photo of Mostyn Street in Llandudno, looking towards the Great Orme

Directly north of Conwy, where we were staying, is Llandudno, a seaside resort that was largely developed in the mid 19th Century. Much of the land that Llandudno stands on was marshlands, owned by Lord Mostyn, and many of the buildings were planned and designed around the same time. As such, particularly along the seafront, there’s an aesthetically pleasing uniformity across the town.

Away from the seafront, the main street is Mostyn Street, and many shops have glass overhangs like those in Harrogate. However, it’s clear that the decline of the high street has affected Llandudno and I noticed a number of empty shops, including what looked like a large M&S. It turns out M&S merely moved to a new store a little further out of town, rather than leave the town entirely as it has done with Bradford, Hull and Huddersfield in recent years.

A photo of Llandudno pier

Llandudno Pier

Stretching out into the Irish Sea is the Grade II listed Llandudno Pier, dating from 1877. It’s the longest in Wales, and remains privately owned. It was also voted Pier of the Year this year, despite it recovering from damage from Storm Darragh at the end of last year. As piers go, there’s a decent mixture of shops – our nine-year-old particularly appreciated the Lego minifigures shop. At various times in its history, it’s been possible to catch ferry services from the far end of the pier, but no such services are currently running.

A photo of a sign welcoming people to the Great Orme country park

The Great Orme

The Great Orme is the name given to the headland to the north of Llandudno. As mentioned, Llandudno itself is former marshland and so is very flat, and mostly at sea level. Meanwhile, the Great Orme rises to a height of just over 200 metres and is a prominent feature on the landscape. Because it’s surrounded by low-lying land, the Great Orme feels like a mountain, but it isn’t – parts of the village of Queensbury, near Bradford, are twice as high for example. It would need to be around three times taller – 610 metres – to be considered a proper mountain.

Much of the Great Orme is owned by the National Trust, but it’s managed on a day-to-day basis by the local authority who operate the facilities there. In the Summit Complex, there’s a café and a shop; there also appeared to be a bar, but this was closed when we visited. There’s also a visitor centre with history about the Great Orme, including its lighthouse.

Across the Great Orme are plenty of sheep, and some Kashmir goats which are descended from a pair gifted to Queen Victoria. There’s also a species of shrub called the Wild Cotoneaster, which is critically endangered and only found on the Great Orme.

The Great Orme Mines

Inside the Great Orme are seams of malachite, a copper ore, mixed amongst the sandstone. These have been mined for over 4000 years, although mining activity ended in the late 19th Century. In 1987, ahead of the building of a new car park, an archaeological dig was ordered, and the mines were rediscovered. That car park never got built, as the dig is still ongoing, with part of it opened as the Great Orme Bronze Age Copper Mines.

The opening up of the mines changed our understanding of Bronze Age history; it was previously thought that bronze tools weren’t used in Britain until the arrival of the Romans. But tools were found in the mines, made using copper from the mine and tin imported from Cornwall.

Today, you can go into the first two levels of the mines, which go around 18 metres underground. This includes a huge cavern, which was excavated by hand and is now home to several stalagmites and stalactites. So far, nine levels have been excavated, with more likely to be found as the excavation continues. Our nine-year-old enjoyed it, and it was good to compare it with the 19th and 20th Century mines that we visited last year at Beamish and the National Coal Mining Museum for England.

The Great Orme tramway

There are a few ways up the Great Orme. If you’re feeling especially athletic, you can walk up, but it’s quite a steep climb. You can drive – there’s a car park at the summit – or catch a bus. Both standard public buses, and an open top minibus for tourists, run to the summit.

You can also travel by cable car, from just above the pier in Llandudno. But, for me, the best way up is on the Great Orme Tramway. Opened in 1902, this runs from Llandudno up to the summit, and is Britain’s last surviving cable-powered tramway. It’s actually two separate tramways; passengers have to alight at the halfway station to switch from one tram to the other. The halfway station, rebuilt in 2001, also doubles as the workshops, and there are large windows so that you can see the winding gear for the cables.

The tramcars are all original, although the 2001 upgrade did introduce some modern equipment. Whilst the tramcars were hauled using cables, they also previously used overhead cables for communication. The 2001 upgrade replaced this with a radio system, so whilst the tramcars retain short trolley poles at each end, they’re no longer used in service.

The lower section of the line runs along several streets, which is unusual for a cable-powered tramway. Both sections operate on the funicular principal, so as one tramcar goes up, another goes down. It’s mostly single track, with each section having a passing place in the middle.

Accessibility

Llandudno station is at the end of a short branch line from Llandudno Junction, and receives regular local services from Chester and Manchester. Less frequent services run to Cardiff; in the past, direct trains to London Euston have operated but not since 2008.

We parked at the Victoria Shopping Centre, which is central to the town and has a multi-storey car park. We didn’t need to charge our electric car there, but there are 12 Type 2 chargers offering up to 22 kW available, on the Roam network. As mentioned, there is also a car park at the top of the Great Orme.

The pier is all on one level. The Great Orme tramway has limited capacity for wheelchairs, which need to be folded whilst on board, and there are steps up to the tramcars.

How to disable go2rtc in Home Assistant

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Home Assistant includes support for go2rtc, a streaming video application, which can be used to monitor and store footage from CCTV cameras. Since the November 2024 (2024.11) release of Home Assistant, go2rtc has been included in Home Assistant’s Default Config, which means that integration is loaded automatically on startup. If you don’t have any cameras to monitor in Home Assistant, this can mean some warnings appearing in your logs, and potentially slow Home Assistant down.

There are two ways to disable go2rtc if you don’t need it – a hard way and an easy way.

Hard way: Disable Home Assistant’s Default Config

You can tell Home Assistant not to load the Default Config. This gives you more control over which built-in integrations are loaded when you boot Home Assistant up, however, it means editing your configuration.yaml file. You’ll need to delete the ‘default_config:‘ line, and then create new entries for all the parts of the default configuration that you want to keep. This may be fine for simple installations, but for most users, this will add more complexity. I wouldn’t recommend this personally.

Easy way: Using HACS integrations

There are two HACS integrations that you need to install:

  1. Early Loader
  2. Default Config Exclude

These are not in the standard HACS repository, so you’ll need to open HACS, click on the three dots in the top right, select ‘Custom Repositories’ and then add the Github URLs in turn. You’ll need to install Early Loader first, restart Home Assistant, and then install Default Config Exclude next.

Once installed, you’ll still need to edit your configuration.yaml file, but instead you’ll only have to add a small block. Here’s mine:

default_config_exclude:
  - go2rtc
  - stream
  - cloud
  - my

What you’ll notice is that I’ve added some other integrations – stream, Home Assistant Cloud, and My Home Assistant. If you don’t have any cameras, then not only do you not need go2rtc, you probably don’t also need stream either. I don’t use Home Assistant Cloud or My Home Assistant, so I’ve disabled these too. As well as starting up a little quicker, Home Assistant also now uses slightly less RAM than before.

Our 2025 holiday: Conwy

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A photo of Conwy castle taken through the gap in the town wall.

We’re back from our 2025 summer holiday in North Wales. Actually, we’ve been back a week now but it’s taken me a little time to sort the photos. I’ll be writing about the places we visited over the next couple of weeks, and today I’m starting with Conwy.

Situated on the North Wales coast, at the mouth of the Conwy Estuary, Conwy is a small town with a big castle. It retains its walls, which still run around almost all of the town and have only been breached in one location. Indeed, many stretches of wall are available to walk along.

Our rented cottage was just outside the walls, but was within walking distance.

A short history of Conwy

The town of Conwy was built by the English as a fortified town in the 13th Century. However, they weren’t the first people to occupy the site; in the 12th Century, some monks had founded an abbey there, known as Aberconwy Abbey. When the English, led by King Edward I, came along, they forced to monks to build a new abbey further up the Conwy Valley to the south. The castle was built first, followed by the town, and all use the same hard local stone. It’s probably due to the hardness of the stone, that the castle and walls have survived so long.

In the 14th Century, Welsh forces managed to seize the castle and the town, and held it for 3-4 months before negotiating a surrender. Inside the town, Aberconwy House was built around this time and remains the oldest surviving building within the town. It’s owned by the National Trust is open four days a week (Wednesday to Saturday) as a second-hand bookshop.

Whilst accessible by sea, it wasn’t until the 19th Century that road and rail access to Conwy became viable, and with it its rise as a tourist destination. In the late 20th Century, the whole town and castle became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The three bridges crossing the Conwy estuary, taken from one of the towers of Conwy Castle

Conwy bridges and tubes

The first bridge to be built across the Conwy Estuary was the Conwy Suspension Bridge, which will be 200 years old next year. It was designed by Thomas Telford, who was responsible for the first roads along the North Wales coast. The bridge still stands, albeit only open to foot traffic nowadays, and is managed by the National Trust. It’s open as a permissive footpath, so you don’t need to pay to cross it.

Telford’s suspension bridge is the world’s oldest surviving ‘modern’ suspension bridge. It could be seen as a dry run for another bridge that Telford designed, the Menai Bridge, further along the North Wales coast and spanning the Menai Strait between the British mainland and Anglesey.

Later on in the 19th Century, Robert Stephenson designed the Conwy Railway Bridge, which was built alongside Telford’s suspension bridge. This brought the North Wales Main Line railway to Conwy, on its way to Holyhead on Anglesey. This bridge is a tubular bridge – a pair of big metal girders, which were erected off site and lifted into place. Each hollow girder carries one of the two railway tracks. Stephenson also designed a tubular bridge to cross the Menai Strait, resulting in the Britannia Bridge. However, the Britannia Bridge was badly damaged in a fire in 1970, and was rebuilt to have two decks, with the railway below and the A55 North Wales Expressway up top.

By the 1950s, Telford’s suspension bridge was becoming a bottleneck, and so a third bridge was opened in 1958, the Pont Conwy (Conwy Bridge). I believe that it was at this point that a gap in Conwy’s walls was made to fit the wider road through. This is a much more plain, low-lying bridge that sits alongside Telford’s suspension bridge, to the north, with Stephenson’s tubular bridge to the south.

Whilst the Pont Conwy relieved one bottleneck, Conwy itself remained a pinch point for traffic heading to the port of Holyhead, where ferries go onwards to Ireland. The streets, and the gateways in the town’s walls are only wide enough for one lane of traffic, and to this day there’s a one-way system around the town. So, in the 1990s, the A55 North Wales Expressway was diverted into a tunnel, which runs under the Conwy Estuary. This was built using a (at the time) pioneering method of immersed tubes, buried in the riverbed. Nowadays, the A55 is all dual carriageway from Chester in England, through to Holyhead, apart from the Britannia Bridge. In fact, the road through Conwy and Colwyn Bay is a ‘secret motorway’, with motorway restrictions but standard green signs for a primary ‘A’ road.

A photo of the interior of Conwy Castle.

Conwy Castle

The castle and town walls are managed by Cadw, the Welsh counterpart to English Heritage. Whilst the walls are free to walk on, you’ll need to pay to enter the castle. There’s a shop and visitor centre next to the town’s main car park, and this leads to a bridge across the B5106 Llanwrst Road and into the castle. Originally, there would have been a set of steps and a drawbridge, but a mini roundabout sits where the steps were.

Since it was constructed in the 13th Century, it’s fallen into ruin and then been repaired several times, but it was taken out of military use in the 17th Century following the English Civil War, and later stripped of all of its iron and lead. It’s now a ruin, although a reasonably well-preserved one, and visitors can climb most of the towers and walk along the walls. The last major investment in 2012 saw the construction of the new visitor centre, new information boards and several sculptures installed.

As it’s a ruin, there’s not masses to see there, although I feel that Cadw have done a better job of presenting the castle than their English counterparts did at Warkworth Castle. You could probably spend 1-2 hours here, depending on how interested you are and how many steps you’re willing to climb.

Other things to see in Conwy

On the waterfront, there’s the Smallest House in Great Britain, as recognised by Guinness World Records. Our nine-year-old went in on their own – we didn’t, as you have to pay. There are various boat tours on offer, mainly up and down the Conwy Estuary.

As you’d expect from a town that has a reputation for tourism, there are plenty of small shops to look around. Opposite the castle is The Knight Shop, which as well as selling various imitation swords and armour, has a fantastic range of mead. Including sparking mead, which I’ve never previously come across. We bought a bottle to try later.

Accessibility

Conwy has a railway station, although it’s a request stop with short platforms and not all trains that pass through are scheduled to stop. That being said, it’s a relatively easy walk from the nearby Llandudno Junction station, which has more regular services.

There’s a small car park inside the town walls, but there’s a larger one off Llanwrst Road which is linked to the town by a foot tunnel under the railway. I’m not aware of any public electric car chargers in or around the town, but there’s a Tesco and a Lidl at Llandudno Junction that we used for charging. There are regular bus services, and an open-top tourist bus regularly runs between Conwy and Llandudno.

For the castle, it’s possible to enter the castle without needing to climb any steps, but once inside you won’t be able to go into any of the towers without using stairs. Cadw and English Heritage members get into the castle for free, and there are discounts for Blue Light card holders, and members of the armed forces. Foster families with a Max Card can also get a discount, but people with disabilities will need to show proof of receipt of DLA or similar.

Aaaaaaah, August again

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Happy Yorkshire Day! Like last year, I will be starting the day at home in Yorkshire, however, we’re off down to the Midlands later today. We’ve only just come back from our holiday in Wales, but this time it’s for a family event. We’re celebrating a big number birthday for one of my cousins. And yes, we had a nice time in Wales.

August is also my busiest period at work. Results Day for A-level students is on the 14th this year, and as I work in university admissions, I’ll be exceptionally busy either side of that date. This includes some later finishes on weekdays, and Saturday working.

As such, there will be lots of blog posts written in advance that’ll be going live over the course of the month. Many of these will be what we did on our holiday in Wales, and I’m sure there’ll be more posts about our electric car as we get used to it.

Playlist of the month: Artists turned actors

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Last July, the playlist of the month was actors turned artists, and so this month I’m flipping it around. This time, I’m offering 10 songs from artists who then went on to star in films once they were famous. As per usual, you can listen along on Spotify.

  • ‘Gotta Tell You’ by Samantha Mumba. Samantha Mumba was big news when her debut album came out in 2000. In 2002, she had a starring role in The Time Machine, loosely adapted from HG Wells’ novel.
  • ‘Popular’ by Ariana Grande. Whilst Ariana initially found fame on TV, she’s best known as a singer who has more recently moved into acting in films. This is from the Wicked (part one) soundtrack, where she was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actress.
  • ‘Magic Dance’ by David Bowie. Labyrinth wasn’t Bowie’s first film role, but it’s certainly his most well-known. At least, it is in the UK, where it performed far better at the box office than in the US, and exposed a whole generation of young people to Bowie’s crotch.
  • ‘Diamonds’ by Rihanna. Rihanna voices Smurfette in yet another upcoming Smurfs film, but she’s also known for starring in Ocean’s 8.
  • ‘Shallow’ by Lady Gaga (and Bradley Cooper). Lady Gaga was nominated for a Golden Globe award for her performance with Bradley Cooper in A Star Is Born, coming around a decade after her first single, Just Dance, was released. ‘Abracadabra’ is a big hit in our house.
  • ‘Obsessed’ by Mariah Carey. Carey’s film debut was in Glitter, which is apparently best forgotten about (I haven’t seen it), but she was lauded for her appearance in a more recent film, Precious.
  • ‘Work It Out’ by Beyoncé. This was actually Beyoncé’s debut solo single – not the more widely played Crazy In Love that followed a year later. It was released to promote the third Austin Powers film, Goldmember, where Beyoncé plays the supporting role of Foxxy Cleopatra. Later, she would also star in Dreamgirls, the Diana Ross/Supremes biopic.
  • ‘Spotlight’ by Jennifer Hudson. Speaking of Dreamgirls, Hudson was another singer-turned-actor who co-starred with Beyoncé in the film.
  • ‘Try Again’ by Aaliyah. Aaliyah’s acting debut was in the film Romeo Must Die alongside Jet Li. This song, as well as being one of her best known, was also released to promote the film. Sadly Aaliyah was killed in a plane crash a year later, in 2001.
  • ‘Believe’ by Cher. Cher has starred in a fair few films, alongside her singing career, and won an Oscar for her role in Moonstruck.

Home Assistant Green review

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A photo of a plugged-in Home Assistant Green

Since I started using Home Assistant in October 2023, I’ve been running it on a Raspberry Pi 4, first in ‘Container’ mode and more recently in ‘Supervisor’ mode. I’ve now bought a Home Assistant Green, and I’m using this to run Home Assistant.

The Home Assistant Green is one of the two dedicated hardware platforms that come pre-installed with Home Assistant. The other, the Home Assistant Yellow, deserves its own section later on. By buying one of these devices, you’re also helping to financially support the Home Assistant project.

Why I bought a Home Assistant Green

As someone who has previously gone down the DIY route, it may seem surprising that I’ve decided to buy a Home Assistant Green. My decision came down to the following:

  • Price – the Home Assistant Green costs around £90 in the UK, which isn’t much more expensive than a bare bones Raspberry Pi 5. Once you’ve added a case, power supply and SSD to a Raspberry Pi, the Home Assistant Green is actually cheaper.
  • Cheap to run – I had considered some kind of mini PC, which would offer me more power, but with both a higher upfront cost and ongoing electricity cost. The Home Assistant Green runs on up to three watts; it comes with a 12 volt, one amp barrel plug power supply. As it’ll be on all the time, I don’t want a power-hungry device.
  • The need for a dedicated Home Assistant device. In May, it was announced that the ‘Supervised’ install method would be deprecated along with ‘Core’; only a tiny fraction of people use these methods. This dovetailed with me wanting a dedicated device for Home Assistant, rather than trying to run it on the same little Raspberry Pi as Plex and some other services. In other words, I was in the market for an additional device to run Home Assistant, and the Home Assistant Green fitted the bill. Meanwhile, my Raspberry Pi 4 can be dedicated to Plex.
  • No longer needing to worry about compatibility. According to Home Assistant Analytics, over a third of people install Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi and so I don’t expect it to become unsupported. However, as the Home Assistant Green is the closest thing to ‘official’ hardware, I know it’ll be well-supported in future releases. As I’m coming to rely on Home Assistant more, I need it to run on a reliable platform.

What the Home Assistant Green can’t do

Coming from a Raspberry Pi, it’s worth noting what features the Home Assistant Green lacks. These include:

The Home Assistant Green does have two standard USB-A ports for you to plug in dongles and hubs, so I have my Thread and Zigbee dongles connected. Not having Wi-Fi or Bluetooth on board may reduce interference on the 2.4 GHz band, I suppose.

The box that the Home Assistant Green comes in

Home Assistant Green hardware

The Home Assistant Green is actually bigger and heavier than I expected it to be – certainly, it’s larger than a Raspberry Pi. It has a very sturdy base, which is designed to act as a heat sink – it’s passively cooled so there’s no fan noise. Inside, there’s a quad-core 1.8 GHz ARM processor, placing it between the Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 in terms of computing power. There’s 4 GB of RAM, and storage comes courtesy of a 32 GB eMMC (embedded multimedia card).

You’ll also get an AC adaptor with a variety of plugs (including a UK 3 pin plug) and an Ethernet cable.

Optionally, you can install a CR2032 battery inside. It doesn’t come with one, but if you add a CR2032 battery then the system clock will remember the time between reboots. It’s mostly only needed if you’re using it somewhere with poor or no internet access, as otherwise the clock synchronises with the internet on startup.

There’s also an HDMI port and a slot for a micro-SD card, but these are only for system recovery purposes and not for general use.

I would tell you more about how it is to use, but to be honest, it’s just like using Home Assistant on any other platform. All I had to do was restore a backup from my Raspberry Pi 4, and I was up and running.

Home Assistant Yellow

If the Home Assistant Green doesn’t meet your requirements, consider the Home Assistant Yellow. It’s more advanced and upgradeable, but also requires some assembly as it ships without a logic board. That’s provided by a Raspberry Pi Compute Module, the idea being that you can upgrade this incrementally over time without needed to buy a whole new device. It’s a nice idea, but it also adds to the cost – the base Home Assistant Yellow costs around £120 with the Compute Module adding £30-40 on top, and it arrives in kit form rather than pre-assembled. However, long term, it could be cheaper due to it being upgradeable.

There are other differences: The Home Assistant Yellow is available with Power over Ethernet (PoE), meaning that it doesn’t need a separate power supply. However, you’ll need a router or a switch which supports this. If you don’t, then you can buy a Home Assistant Yellow with an AC adaptor.

The Home Assistant Yellow also has an 802.16 radio, meaning that it can support Zigbee devices without an extra dongle. This can also be re-programmed to support Thread, but not both Thread and Zigbee at the same time. Additionally, there’s a 3.5mm audio port, and inside, there’s an expansion port for installing an SSD if you need one.

Whilst I have the technical knowledge to get a Home Assistant Yellow up and running, once you’ve factored in everything, it costs about double the price of a Home Assistant Green.