Days Out

Our 2025 holiday: Chester Zoo

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A pair of rhinos at Chester Zoo

This is the last of my blog posts about what we did on our summer holiday to Wales – bearing in mind we’ve been back for over six weeks. Our last stop was on the way home, and as with our visit to Beamish on the way home from Northumberland, not actually in Wales. This was a visit to Chester Zoo.

I last blogged about a visit to Chester Zoo in 2018, when I took our then two-year-old on a day out when Christine was working a weekend. We’ve been back many times since, despite it being over an hour’s drive away. Indeed, we had an annual membership for a year – unfortunately, that year was 2020 when the zoo was shut for several months due to the pandemic, although we still managed seven visits that year. Our last visit was almost exactly two years ago.

This year’s Chester Zoo visit was prompted by receiving gift vouchers at Christmas from my parents, who joined us this time. It had been much longer since they had last visited, and I imagine the zoo has changed significantly since then.

Heart of Africa

Our main focus for this year’s visit was the new Heart of Africa zone. This replaces an area of the zoo which was starting to feel a little run-down, and makes it more like the other newer areas of the zoo. The rhinos, painted wild dogs and meerkats remain roughly where they were before. The giraffes have moved to a new mixed savannah habitat here, along with zebras, ostriches and antelope. It’s definitely an improvement, and the animals feel more in context with themed surroundings. There’s also a mock-up of a lab, showing the work that zoo staff do to ensure the animals’ welfare.

Snow Leopards

Another recent arrival at Chester Zoo were a pair of snow leopards. We got to (briefly) see the male snow leopard, but the female is off show as she’s recently given birth to an adorably fluffy cub. These have a new purpose-built habitat in the older part of the zoo, near to the Red Pandas. Which were doing the usual Red Panda thing of sleeping in a tree, as it was a hot summer day.

Chester Zoo is huge, and even if you get there at 10am and stay until closing, it’s almost impossible to see everything in one day. As such, on this year’s visit, we prioritised seeing the new zone and specific animals that we enjoy seeing. Alongside the new zone is The Reserve, which is Chester Zoo’s first on-sight overnight accommodation for visitors and overlooks the savannah area with the giraffes, so you can extend your visit to two days.

Accessibility

Accessibility is reasonably good, although the site isn’t completely flat – thanks to Flag Lane, which is a public right of way that cuts through the middle of the site. There are two crossings of Flag Lane; the one by the elephants and nearer the entrance is best for wheelchairs. The other crossing, the Bat Bridge, is wooden.

Wheelchairs and mobility scooters are available to hire, and there’s a changing places toilet near the main entrance. Chester Zoo really want you to download their app, but I managed to find a PDF of the current map here – it’s very buried on their web site.

Chester Zoo is located next to one of Chester’s Park and Ride sites, and so you can get a bus from Chester railway station (this is what we did on our first visit as a couple in 2012). Ample parking on-site is available, and there are 20 medium-speed 7 kW electric car chargers close to the entrance. However, when we arrived on a busy summer Saturday, these had all been taken by 10:30am, and I had to pop back at lunchtime to move my car to a bay that had become free. They’re on the Pod Point network.

Our 2025 holiday: RSPB Conwy

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A photo of some birds at RSPB Conwy

I’m almost done with our holiday posts – this is the penultimate one, and is about the RSPB Nature Reserve at Conwy. It’s relatively new, having opened in 1995, and exists because of the building of the A55 North Wales Expressway.

Tunnel spoil

When the A55 Conwy tunnel was built, the spoil created from the excavation needed to go somewhere. Major tunnelling projects often result in the spoil being used to create nature reserves: Samphire Hoe was created from the Channel Tunnel, RSPB Wallasea Island from the Elizabeth Line, and when HS2 is finished, it’ll result in new chalk grassland in the Chilterns. For the A55, the spoil was placed along the side of the Conwy Estuary, to create a new wetland habitat during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Many birds have now made this wetland their home, and we saw plenty of white egrets, lapwings and whimbrels that you wouldn’t often see elsewhere. The site consists of two large lagoons, with paths and bird hides around them, although the smaller of the two lagoons was completely dry when we visited, as a result of the exceptionally dry summer that we’ve had this year.

A photo of a six-spot burnet at RSPB Conwy

Visitor centre

There’s a large visitor centre at the site, home to the shop as well as information about what you can expect to see. Obviously, the birds there are wild, and so nothing is guaranteed, but we saw a good variety. You can also pick up maps for the trials around the lagoons – we didn’t do the longest path, as we were just visiting for the afternoon. There’s also a café, plenty of places to eat a picnic, and a small playground.

One of the hides that we visited also had an extensive history of the building of the road tunnel, and how that led to the establishment of the nature reserve.

We had a nice, relatively peaceful afternoon at RSPB Conwy. There is the background noise of traffic on the A55, but it was nice to go somewhere with a slower pace.

Accessibility

The site is mostly flat, although the paths are mainly gravel, or wooden boards across the wetter areas. There are various colour-coded trails that you can follow, and the maps provide information about gradients.

Access to the site is from Junction 18 of the A55 – it’s directly connected to the roundabout here. Work was ongoing to improve cycle access when we visited, and it’s a about a half mile walk from Llandudno Junction railway station. RSPB members get free entry.

The Cat That Slept for a Thousand Years

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A photo of The Cat That Slept for a Thousand Years

Whilst I’m not quite done writing about our holiday in Wales, I’m going to squeeze this blog post in here because it’s about a special exhibition which closes a week on Sunday: The Cat That Slept for a Thousand Years at the Manchester Museum.

Fundamentally, it’s just a giant inflatable cat – there’s (someone else’s) small child in my photo above for scale. It’s illuminated, and its tail and ears twitch every now and again. The room it’s in has low lighting, and soothing background music. And yes, you’re welcome to touch the giant cat. It’s like a huge sensory room.

In addition to this, there are some feline objects from the museum’s collection alongside, and before you enter the space with the cat, there’s a fictional short film about how the cat was ‘found’ by scientists in the Antarctic.

It’s a bit of fun, and I imagine younger kids, and those with additional needs who respond well to soothing sensory environments, will love it. The exhibition, like the rest of the museum, is free, but donations are welcome and you do need to book a timed ticket to manage crowds. It wouldn’t be much of a sensory space if everyone piled in there all at once.

The rest of the Manchester Museum

If Swarm is correct, then this was our seventh visit to the Manchester Museum – and yet, as far as I’m aware, I’ve never blogged about any of our six previous visits. Which is a shame, as it’s one of our favourite museums, and a worthy winner of this year’s European Museum of the Year prize.

Like Jodrell Bank, it’s part of the University of Manchester, and has been open since 1867. More recently, it re-opened in February 2023, after an 18 month closure. This saw the opening of a new exhibition space (where the giant cat currently is) and several additional permanent galleries. It’s also actively involved in repatriations of some of the artefacts in its collections to the communities and societies where they belong. Whilst we were there, visitors were encouraged to contribute to a consultation about the display of an Egyptian mummy, and whether it’s still appropriate to display human remains in this way nowadays.

Our favourite bit is the Vivarium, which is the only part of the museum with live animals – namely frogs and lizards. The live collections originate from the university’s zoology department, and the museum is involved in breeding programmes for rare species of frogs. There’s more in the Manchester Frog Blog.

Accessibility

Though housed in a late 19th Century building, the Manchester Museum has, as mentioned, had a number of refurbishments in recent years, and it tries hard to be as accessible as possible. Though it’s on multiple floors, there are lifts and stairs can be avoided. Wheelchairs are available to hire.

It’s a short walk from Manchester Oxford Road station, along, appropriately enough, Oxford Road. It is, however, some way away from the nearest tram stop (St Peters Square) but there are plenty of buses that pass right outside the entrance. For car parking, the University of Manchester’s Car Park D is a short walk – it’s a multi-storey with almost 1000 spaces, including 8 for electric vehicle charging (both medium 7 kW Type 2 chargers and some rapid chargers).

As mentioned above, entry to the Manchester Museum is free, but donations are welcome.

Our 2025 holiday: Bodnant Garden

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A photo of Bodnant Garden.

The next place we went to on our 2025 holiday to North Wales was Bodnant Garden. It’s another National Trust property, and consists of the formal gardens attached to the larger Bodnant Estate.

Bodnant Garden is located to the south of where we were staying, in the Conwy Valley. The garden itself began to be developed in 1874 (so just over 150 years ago), when the Pochin family bought the estate at auction. Over time, the garden was extended multiple times, and is now home to a number of prize-winning trees. It came into the National Trust’s care in 1949, but the rest of the Bodnant Estate remains family-owned.

If you look at the prices for Bodnant Garden, you’ll see that they’re towards the higher end of the scale compared to some National Trust properties. That’s no accident – Bodnant Garden is huge, and we ended up spending all day here. Being as it was the summer holidays, there was a Wallace and Gromit Augmented Reality Trail running, although today was its last day, sorry. Our nine-year-old really enjoyed doing the trail, which included some hands-on activities too.

A photo of Bodnant Garden.

The Wallace and Gromit trail took us to the far end of the site, and then we made our way steadily back along the stream that flows through it. There’s lots to see – even if you’re not a big horticulturalist, it’s still very pretty.

In all, we probably saw about two thirds of what was there – we missed some of the fringes as it is just so big. Indeed, there is more than one café there; one at the entrance, and another near the Old Mill towards the middle of the site. It’s definitely somewhere I’d consider going to again, and taking a different route around.

Accessibility

You enter the site at the top, and then there are slopes down to the stream – some more gentle than others. The map shows a couple of step-free routes that encompass most of the site, but there are some steep slopes. Most of the paths are gravel.

There are two electric car charging sockets in the car park. On the plus side, they’re both completely free to use, however, one is a medium-speed 7 kW Type-2 charger, and one is just a 3-pin plug. We ended up having to use the latter with our granny charger, but then we were there all day, and it was free after all. It managed to charge our Nissan Leaf up from 31% to 59% over around five hours.

The nearest railway station is Tal-y-Cafn on the Conwy Valley Line, however, it’s a 40 minute walk, it’s a request stop, and there are only 6 trains per day (4 on Sundays). If arriving by public transport, a better bet is the number 25 bus, which runs from Llandudno and calls at Llandudno Junction station. That being said, there’s still only one bus every two hours.

Nearby attractions

The Bodnant Estate also runs an adjacent garden centre, and Bodnant Welsh Food is a short drive away. We nipped into the shop there, although it was rather expensive and didn’t have a great range.

On the other side of the valley, and about a ten minute drive away, are the Conwy Water Gardens. We didn’t go as the TripAdvisor reviews aren’t great; it seems like somewhere that used to be better than it is now.

Our 2025 holiday: Anglesey Sea Zoo

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A photo of a boat at Anglesey Sea Zoo

After Beaumaris Castle and Plas Newydd, our third stop on our Anglesey day out was at Anglesey Sea Zoo. This is towards the southern tip of the island.

Anglesey Sea Zoo is an aquarium, with a focus on the sea creatures that you would encounter in the seas around Wales and the rest of Britain. As such, you won’t see many tropical fish, or massive sharks, but you will get to see the Lobster Hatchery of Wales – a conservation project to boost the numbers of wild European lobsters. Anglesey Sea Zoo was also the few aquariums in the world to successfully breed the native British species of seahorse, and you can see some of the seahorses on show there. There are also plenty of anemones, starfish, crabs, prawns, and various different species of fish.

Anglesey Sea Zoo is quite small, especially compared to Sea Life Centres or The Deep in Hull, and we got around it in about an hour. But it was interesting, and is certainly something to bear in mind for a wet day as it’s almost all indoors.

Accessibility

Anglesey Sea Zoo is mostly on one level and so those who struggle with steps should be able to see almost everything. There’s a modest car park, and (at time of writing) there were two free of charge medium-speed 7 kW electric car chargers available for visitors to use. The same bus that serves Plas Newydd gets within about a mile of the aquarium.

Nearby attractions

Next door to Anglesey Sea Zoo is the Halen Mon Sea Salt Factory – there’s a shop, and you can book on factory tours which run twice a day.

There’s also Foel Farm Park nearby, which is an open farm with play areas. We didn’t have the time to visit either of these when we went.

National Trust Tracker app

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A screenshot of the National Trust tracker app

If you’re a member of the National Trust like we are, and want to get the most out of your membership, then there’s an app for that.

The app is, appropriately enough, called National Trust Tracker, and it lets you view nearby National Trust properties and track those that you have visited. You can either view them as a list, split by county, or on a map.

There’s also a Statistics tab, which gives you some insights into the properties I’ve visited. I’ve recorded visits to 29 in the app – the actual number will be higher, but I’ve limited it to those where I can record an exact date that I last went. That means that I’ve not included any visited in childhood. Overall, I’ve been to 4.6% of all National Trust properties in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

You can also see how many visits you’ve made each year, your top region (which is Cheshire for me) and your favourite day to visit (Sundays, perhaps unsurprisingly).

The app is for iOS only, although there appears to be an unrelated app for Android which doesn’t look as nice.

Our 2025 holiday: Plas Newydd

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A photo of Plas Newydd, looking up from the sea wall along the Menai Strait

After visiting Beaumaris Castle in the morning, the second place we visited on Anglesey was Plas Newydd (Welsh for ‘New House’). It’s a large country house overlooking the Menai Strait, originally started in the 15th Century but substantially rebuilt in the 18th Century. Nowadays, it’s in the care of the National Trust, who look after both the house and its gardens. The house is presented largely as it would have been in the 1950s.

We went around the house first. Not all of the rooms are open to view; though the National Trust have cared for it since 1976, until around 10 years ago people still lived in the property. The dining room is home to a huge painting by Rex Whistler, which was the largest ever canvas painting in the UK when it was unveiled in the 1930s. A previous owner of Plas Newydd, Henry William Paget, fought in the Battle of Waterloo where he lost a leg – the house has an exhibition about him including one of his prosthetic legs. He was awarded the title of ‘Marquess of Anglesey’ for his bravery.

The 5th Marquess of Anglesey, Henry Cyril Paget, was a rather flamboyant character who inherited Plas Newydd in 1898. He converted the chapel into a theatre, where he performed in what we would now most likely describe as drag. Whilst he was born into great wealth, ultimately he ended up bankrupt six years later in 1904, and died the following year. Many of his costumes were subsequently sold in the ‘Great Anglesey Sale’. However, some photographs survive, and visitors are invited to dance in one of the rooms, as the 5th Marquess would have done.

The gardens at Plas Newydd

Gardens

There are some formal gardens at Plas Newydd, on the slope down to the Menai Strait, and there are great views across the Strait towards Caernarfon. There’s also plenty of parkland, including an arboretum. Anglesey is also one of the few remaining places in Britain with wild populations of native red squirrels, and there’s a feeding station in the arboretum. We didn’t get a chance to visit this, unfortunately, and we didn’t see any red squirrels during our time in Anglesey.

As it’s the summer holidays, there were plenty of activities for kids as part of the Summer of Play event that runs until the end of this month.

Accessibility

For the house, only the ground floor is accessible to those who can’t use stairs. There is a step-free route from the car park to the house, but not all routes across the parkland are step-free and it is on a slope.

When we visited, five electric car chargers were being installed in the car park – these appear to be operational now, offering 7 kW medium-speed charging on the RAW Power network. Bus services pass the site on Mondays-Saturdays, or it’s a roughly 2 mile walk from Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch station, if you want to catch the train.

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.

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.

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.