Wales - Llandudno

I'm doing a recap on the third part of our trip to Wales and the Isle of Man, just on twelve months ago, as I never did get around to blogging about it.  I want to  get it down before I forget.

We left the Isle of Man by ferry back to Liverpool on the first of September.  We are always intrigued by the wind farms out in the sea.

Our first job was to collect our little Hyundai hire car.

The planned destination for the day was the town of Llandudno, on the north coast of Wales. It sounded nice when I had read about it, and it didn't disappoint.  It is a reasonably sized town, but not too big.

We found Cricklewood House B & B, which  ended up being then nicest accommodation we stayed in all trip and were ready to start exploring by lunch time.  In hindsight, were pretty lucky to get this accommodation.

It was a nice, warm Saturday towards the end of the summer school holidays, so there were plenty of people around, although it didn't feel crowded.  A major item on the landscape was the pier and the beach was mainly stones.

There was a small section that was sand and we were amazed to see donkey rides.  It was just like a scene out of a vintage children's picture book.

There were also a couple of rather attractive boats taking tourists for short rides.  It would have been lovely, but we didn't have enough time.

Then it was time to go for a wander along the pier.  It certainly was the nicest one we have come across and was very popular.  Looking back to the beach you can seen the lovely row of tall terraces that line the shoreline.

Once again, there were plenty of people, but it didn't feel too crowded.

The first part of the pier had lots of souvenir shops, but they thinned out as you ventured further.  An ice cream kiosk hit the spot.

What a lovely old merry-go-round.

Towards the end there was an amusement arcade.  They seem to feature at every seaside town and are always well patronised.  I'm guessing they would be very popular during wet weather days, which tend to happen in the UK.

We were surprised to see fisher folk at the very end of the pier.

Back on land you notice this limestone head land "The Great Orme".  Its name derives from the old Norse word for sea serpent.  You can walk up there. Yeah, right! Or you can drive up.....

Or you can catch the Great Orme Tramway.  It's pretty obvious which choice we made.  The tramway has been in operation since 1902.

We passed this pretty pub.

The tramway runs right beside the road.  The road is rather steep towards the end.

Once you reach the top there is an information centre and a stunning sculpture of a mountain goat.

The view is spectacular.

Another way we could have reached the summit is by cable car.

On our way down you could just see a bit of the Great Orme Bronze Age Copper Mines.  These were only discovered in 1987, when some landscaping was done.  Once again, we didn't have sufficient time to visit, but I think it would have been really interesting.

Remember that pretty pub?  How could we not go and enjoy a refreshing beer in the warm afternoon.

When we drove into Llandudno, we found that we were going to be treated to an unexpected activity to enjoy.  The UK Goldwing Club were having their annual Llandudno rally.  I've never seen so many Goldwings, and they were all so beautifully presented.  

There were hardly any that were stock standard, with murals, lights - so many lights - flags and every imaginable accessory.

The town crier and mayor were on hand to welcome them all.

Once it started to get dark the streets were closed for a light parade.  Wow!  What a spectacle.  It went for ages.  We are so pleased that we were there to see it all.

Then it was time for dinner.  There were heaps of restaurants, but also heaps of motorcyclists, so remember that pretty little pub?  Yes, we ventured back there and enjoyed a delicious meal.

I think Llandudno was one of my favourite places that we visited.  The fact that we were on the road again, exploring, could have contributed to that.  Anyway, it has provided some wonderful memories.

Holiday Reminiscing

This time last year we were on the Isle of Man for the motorcycle racing.  I really can't believe that it is twelve months since our trip.

At the time, I blogged about our week in Wales and our time on the Isle of Man, but I never did get around to blogging about the final part of our trip.  I think this is a good opportunity to finish that off, before I forget all about it.  I know I have already forgotten a lot of the little details, so I'll have to look a few things up.

To start off, I will do a bit of an overview of our holiday - travel tips for my future reference - things that worked well, things that didn't.  Please bear with me.

PLANNING

When we travel we only tend to plan a framework, not the minute details, although Mick wouldn't believe me - he reckons I have it micro managed.  OK, I did do some reading up and found interesting things in Pinterest, so I was at least aware of what there was to see in Wales and roughly where things were, but that was all. If we saw it, we did, if we didn't, it didn't matter.

Before we left home for or our UK trip last year we booked our flights, a one way train ticket to Cardiff, our first night's accommodation and a hire car to be dropped off at Liverpool several days later.  We had our accommodation in Liverpool booked, foot passenger ferry tickets to and from the Isle of Man, our accommodation and hire car on the Isle of Man and our flight home.  OK, that is quite a bit, but there were a lot of gaps in between.

I made sure that I had hard copies of all travel documents in my travel folder, all were saved on the laptop and I had emailed them to myself before leaving home, including copies of our passports. (I could have probably used Dropbox or similar, but I didn't bother).

Our itinerary consisted of - have an afternoon in Cardiff, collect our car, explore Wales for a week, spend two weeks on the Isle of Man, collect another car, drive for a few days across England to Heathrow, from where we would fly home.

This is where our flexible planning came into its own.  As I shared in my blog in August last year, we only got a couple of days into our trip around Wales when we realised we weren't going to be able to see very much at all in our allocated time frame.  We therefore decided that rather rush Wales and then drive across England (we had no plan in mind anyway, keeping it flexible) we would see half of Wale in the  first week and return to see the other half of Wales after the Isle of Man, ending up back in Cardiff before catching another train to Heathrow.  That was the  best ever decision.

TECHNOLOGY

Whether we like it or not, technology requires some planning when travelling.  When you want to blog as you go along, it adds yet another layer.  Previously, we have taken our phones and not had very successful access when in the UK.  We have also previously taken a small laptop for blogging, once again, with not a lot of success at accessing wifi.  On the Isle of Man we have also sometimes used the computers in the library.  On the whole, the process has previously proved rather frustrating.  Since I've had my ipad I've tried to blog using it, once again with little success and it has just made me cranky - not a good way to be when you are supposed to be enjoying your holiday.

So, what did we do differently this time?

We both wanted access to our normal phone numbers while away for work and family reasons, so we went to our provider to set up overseas access.  Yes, it costs, but we were prepared to wear that.  I then cancelled all those annoying SMS ads that come up on my phone, as they would cause unnecessary costs.  Most importantly, we turned our mobile data setting to OFF.

We took both my ipad and Mick's laptop.

When we arrived in London, we purchased a local SIM card and installed it in my ipad.  I don't normally have a SIM card in my ipad.  That way I could use the ipad on the fly and also use it as a hot spot for our phones and the laptop.  I bought plenty of data, more than we needed, but we didn't have to think any more about it. 

It worked beautifully......except on the Isle of Man.  We find that we continue to have dramas there.  Fortunately, the cottage we rent does now have wifi.  I now know that when we get there in future to just go and get a SIM card from their local provider.  Really, I should know this by now, we've been there often enough.

Also, when on the Isle of Man, Mick and his mate are in constant phone contact.  Al set Mick up on Whatsapp, which we hadn't used before and it worked really well, rather than international SMS messages.  They continue to use it all the time.

Back in England and Wales, having the ipad linked to the internet all the time was perfect for using it as our GPS.  The ipad was so good for navigating, being a bit bigger screen than a phone.  I also used the ipad while travelling along to arrange accommodation.

PHOTOS

We still carried Mick's DSLR camera and my little point and shoot, but realistically, we mainly used our phones.  The photo quality is so good now.  The only drawback is that they don't zoom well.  That is where my camera still tended to come out.

ACCOMMODATION

Other than our first night and the night in Liverpool, we had no accommodation booked in Wales, rather we just winged it.  This was fine, even though it was school summer holidays.  Previously, we had visited the "Visit England" information centres to find local accommodation, but not all B&Bs were listed with them, as the registration costs were quite high.  Just knocking on doors worked OK, but you were unsure of costings or quality.

This time, after seeing many ads on TV for Trivago we gave it a try.  It worked brilliantly.  Once we worked out where we expected to be that night (we generally had a good idea by late morning) I would get onto Trivago and look for accommodation.  Our criteria was generally fairly central in a town, so we could walk to get dinner, and that it had parking.  We didn't look for parking at first, but it didn't take us long to make that a priority.  Trivago then gave prices from Wotif, Expedia and Booking.com.  There were also plenty of reviews to have a look at.  Only in St David did Trivago show the town to be booked out, however, we luckily found a very central and reasonably priced B&B with a "Vacancy" sign out the front.  We stayed mainly in B&Bs, with a couple of pubs thrown in.  All our accommodation lived up to expectations, some were better than others of course, but that is half the fun of it. We aimed for mid priced accommodation.

We haven't ventured into Air B&B while in the UK, but there are lots of options there as well.

TRANSPORT

We have only used trains a couple of times previously in the UK.  We found catching the train to Cardiff on our first day worked so well.  Mick was not having to drive while tired after a long flight and we didn't have to combat the busy traffic around London.

We used Avis hire cars in Wales and England, as their depots were the most convenient for us.  We had a Suzuki Swift, which was my favourite, then a Nissan Micra on the Isle of Man, which was the best looking, and then a Hyundai i20 on our final leg.  That size works perfectly for us.  Anything smaller would be a bit too cosy with our luggage. Likewise, you only want a small car on their narrow roads.

MONEY

I know you aren't meant to, but I have previously mainly used cash while in the UK.  When funds needed replenishing, I would take out my daily maximum allowable at the ATM, therefore just one exchange fee and only exposing your card at a minimum of locations.  By using cash, it was also easy to keep an eye on our spending.

This time I used the Cash Passport, loading it up with GB pounds before we left.  You have an app on your phone, so once again you can keep an eye on spending.  It worked really well.  The convenience of a credit card, without paying for the currency conversions, and the only fees from my end was the conversion commission for the initial loading up of the card.  We even had a bit of credit on the card left over when we came home, so through the app I just converted it back to Aussie dollars and spent it on our last trip away.

We also made sure our bank knew of our travel plans.

We did still carry some cash for those occasions when you couldn't use a card.

We always make sure we each carry some cash and we each have a couple of different credit card options, just in case something doesn't work, or gets stolen.  On that note, with the latest skimming fraud that now happens, both our wallets have the built in anti-skimming protection.

I think that about sums everything up.  Rather long winded, but handy for my future reference.  Next, I will actually get into the travel side of things.

IOM - Beaches

Funnily enough, as the Isle of Man (IOM) is an island, it has lots of beaches.  Over our five visits we have seen quite a few,  but there are many more that we haven't visited as yet.  Let's have a look at the ones we visited this time.

 This little map by Alice Qualye illustrates them well. Source

Port Erin is right at the south of the Island.  It has a lovely sandy beach and you often see little sail boats out in the bay.  St Catherine's Well was the source of fresh water which enabled the settlement to be set up.

We enjoyed lunch in a little tea rooms beside the beach on one of the rare pleasant weathered days.

Our one and only meal of queenies on this trip.  Queenies are small scallops which are fished at the Isle of Man and rather tasty.  There is even a festival for them.

Bradda Head and Bradda Tower dominate the landscape down here.

Here is a view of the beach from Bradda Head, with the little tea rooms to the left of the beach, next to the lighthouse.

Peel is a lovely town on the western side of the island.  It has about the nicest sandy beach, which is frequented by lots of swimmers and little children playing in the sand.  As you can see there is a castle at one end of the beach.

This is the view looking towards the other end of the beach.

You cross a little causeway to reach the castle.

Down the other side of the causeway there is another little beach, Fenella Beach.  It is always littered with heaps of scallop shells.

We were hunting for sea glass but only found one tiny little piece.

We did notice this painted rock not far from the beach.  We saw a few of them around the island.  Rather sweet.

One beach we have to visit each time is at the Point of Ayr, the most northern tip of the island.

No sand here.  Previously we have been here at high tide and it is quite noisy as the rocks rub against each other with the movement of the tides.  This time the tide was out and it was rather quiet compared to normal.

No sand castles here.  I had fun building this teetering tower and hoping it would stay long enough for me to take a photo.  

We have a tradition that we write a note with the stones on the grassy bank - always in the same place.

That's a better photo.  You can actually read it.

The second smaller light house was built as the shore kept moving further from the original one.  Now the second one is quite a distance from the shore line.  The fog horns are no longer used.  I'd have loved to have heard them.

The lighthouse looked stunning with all the gorse.

Ramsay is another town with a long beach.  It looked rather calm on our first visit.

We visited a few days later and it was a little different.

You start to get a feel for what it can be like in winter, and I know this is nothing compared to the size the waves can sometimes reach.

That is Queen's Pier in the background.  It is in  a poor state of repair, but a restoration has just begun.  I do hope to see it in its former glory at some stage in the future.

That sea really was quite big.

As the weather was bad we just went driving.

This is the beach in the capital of Douglas.  Admittedly, it was high tide, which made everything seem more extreme.

This is the only other photo showing any of Douglas beach, in calmer times.

And finally, back to the Castletown area.

To the south of the harbour it is just rocks.  It isn't a good photo, but this is quite a nice garden that unfortunately get pretty much washed away in bad weather.   You have to admire the tenacity of the owners.

To the north of the harbour there is a little promenade with a long sandy beach in front of it. 

 We had a nice walk along here looking for sea glass, with minimal success.

It was nice seeing this horse and rider enjoying the sand.

The final beach we visited was Derbyhaven, which was not at all picturesque at the time we visited.

However, it did provide the mother load of sea glass and china.  We had received a tip off from the owner of the store in Peel where I bought my Isle of Man cross stitch that this was the best place to find it.  She was dead right, and it was just coincidence that we were there at low tide.  I'll show it to you shortly.

This isn't quite a beach, but it is the southern most point on the island, The Sound and the little island is the Calf of Man.

Another thing we seem to do is come down here on the afternoon of our last day on the island.  It is a lovely, peaceful place (and the cafe does good coffee and cake).

The weather was glorious and we even had a seal come quite close and check us out.

There are other beaches that we have visited previously and still plenty that we hope to visit at some stage in the future, but I think we did rather well to see what we did.