The Tibetans have a saying that “horses make a perfect landscape more beautiful”. In Snowdonia, castles could be said to fulfill the same function. Plenty of places in the world have mountains rising from the seashore, but where else can you admire coastal peaks towering behind massive medieval fortresses?
The great bastions dotted along the north Welsh shoreline date from Edward I’s wars against Llewelyn ap Gruffydd in the late thirteenth century. To keep the rebellious Welsh under control, Edward commissioned his master castle-builder, the Frenchman, James St George, to throw “an Iron Ring” of fortifications around North Wales – the most splendid of them overlooking the mouth of the River Conwy.
Although somewhat upstaged by the three bridges since built across the estuary, the castle still strikes an imposing profile, especially when viewed from the hills above the town, from where it forms the centrepiece of a magnificent panorama stretching from the Great Orme promontory behind Llandudno to the Carneddau range inland. On a clear day, you can even make out Merseyside and the distant Isle of Man.
Apart from holding some of Europe’s most splendid medieval architecture, Conwy also offers a unique walking experience. It’s the only walled town in Britain to have preserved its original ramparts. Dipping and rising to the high ground above the market square, the walls provide some great vantage points over the tightly packed gardens and slate-roofed houses of the old town to the castle, lording it over the quayside and tidal river flats below.
A walk around Conwy’s ramparts makes the perfect preamble to this superb sixteen-kilometre/ten-mile trek through the hills behind the town. Taking its cue from the long-distance “North Wales Path”, our route will lead you from the castle to the faded Victorian resort of Penmaenmawr, via an impressive Iron Age hillfort, a Neolithic droveway flanked by stone rows and tombs, and a “panoramic walk” cut around the sides of an extinct volcano.
The real highpoint of the day, however, comes in the form of a lonely stone circle on the ridge above Penmaenmawr. Nestled in a saucer of wild moorland, the so-called “Druid’s Circle” stands in striking counterpoint to the expressway scything along the coastal strip below it, which you’ll use to return to Conwy after one final, steep descent. From the end point of the walk, frequent bus services travel eastwards along the dual-carriageway, allowing this exploration of Conwy’s coastal hinterland to be completed as a linear route, rather than a more limiting circuit.
Numerous options for cutting the route short offer themselves along the way, the most obvious of them from the end of the Jubilee Panoramic Walk. At the pillared entranceway to the Walk, instead of continuing up to the Druid’s Circle you can head down Mountain Lane and straight back to the finishing point at Penmaenmawr.
[1] Leave Conwy Castle Information Centre via the door on its upper level and bear left towards the far corner of the car park outside, where you’ll see the start of the first, short section of medieval walls. Once you’ve walked as far as you can, a staircase deposits you back at street level inside one of the medieval gateways.
(A) Flanked by eight barrel-shaped towers, Conwy Castle was, and remains, the most handsome of the chain of fortresses erected by the Plantagenet king in Wales. Among the architectural wonders of its era, it was built in only four years, and provided protection for a self-contained garrison town, or bastide. Welshman were allowed to enter it during the daytime, but not to trade.
Bear left on to Rosehill Street and keep heading around the bend on the main road for a couple of minutes until you reach a turning next to the HSBC bank. Head left here down Rosemary Lane. Cross the railway bridge, and turn right immediately after it down a little alleyway leading to the start of steps on to the train platform. Walk to the end of the platform to the exit at the far end, then head left to reach the start of the second, longer segment of town walls. This leads you around three sides of the medieval ramparts, ending up at their far northern corner.
(B) The original medieval grid plan of Conwy survives little altered, enclosing picturesque streets of half-timbered inns, shops, cobbled lanes and cafés, and a church that originally served the Cistercian monastery founded here by Llewelyn the Great in 1199. What makes Conwy unique in Britain are its ramparts. Nowhere else in the country will you find such extensive, well preserved medieval walls. Punctuated with twenty-one towers and three double gateways, the battlements run for nearly 1300 metres (1400 yards) – in places at impressive gradients.
One of the advantages of viewing the castle from its ramparts is that it blocks out the three unsightly bridges across the Conwy River. The first of the trio – a narrow suspension bridge sporting mock-medieval turrets – appeared in 1826 as part of Thomas Telford’s Chester–Holyhead road. Next, in 1849, came Robert Stephenson’s tubular, wrought-iron railway bridge, which is still in use. And finally, to its north, stands the modern concrete road bridge, built in 1958. Contrary to appearances, the latter isn’t the main route across the river: traffic on the A55 trunk route plunges beneath the water via a tunnel. Our route into the hills follows a much older path – an ancient upland trackway that once connected the mouth of the Conwy with the Afon Ddu valley in the west. After a steady ascent over bracken, heather and bilberry-covered slopes, it skirts the rock-studded ridge of Conwy Mountain or Mynydd y Dref.
When you near the end of the rampart walk, go down the last flight of steps onto Berry Street. Go under the arch and then immediately right down Lower Gate Street, then bear left where the lane forks to pick up the tarmac path along the riverfront. A green North Wales Path (NWP) sign and Wales Coast Path (WCP) sign points the way.
[2] The NWP runs past the old marina, and along the bottom of Bodlondeb Wood bending west after 10 mins to skirt Aberconwy School; ignore the footbridge here. Eventually, it reaches a road (Morfa Drive) which you turn left onto, past the front entrance to the school. Keep heading down the road until you arrive at the busier Bangor Rd, which you cross to reach the footbridge over the railway at the end of the lane visible directly ahead (use the pelican crossing to your right).
Once over the bridge, keep to the path continuing from the bottom of the steps, but bear right uphill when it meets Mountain Road. After a short climb, look for a track rising right in front of a row of white terraced houses to a wooden stile. This leads to the start of the path up Conwy Mountain (Mynydd y Dref).
You can follow the well worn NWP along the south flank of the hill, or cut right, up a side track to reach the ridge. A choice of trails presents itself when you get to the crest: keep to the one closest to the ridgeline, which will take you after 10–15mins to the Iron Age hillfort of Caer Seion – the day’s featured viewpoint.
(C) Remnants of an Iron Age fort called Caer Seion spill from a summit plateau encircled by the vestiges of walls and ditches. More than sixty hut circles are discernible amid the rock debris. Their Neolithic inhabitants would have enjoyed much the same view as you see today, which in clear weather extends as far as the Cumbrian Fells.
[3] A clear path drops downhill from the west end of the fort, but things get a little more complicated once you’re on level ground, where a tangle of moorland trails takes over. Keep following the NWP wayposts, which will lead you through a gap between a pair of low hillocks, then left down to a metal gate and cattle grid, where the path meets an unsurfaced farm track. Turn left here to follow the track as it loops downhill and around the foot of some crags to Sychnant Pass.
(D) Wayposts of the North Wales Path lead walkers downhill from Caer Seion to the Sychnant Pass , a former toll road which horse-drawn traffic used when the beach route was covered by the tide. A view opens up over the secluded Gyrach Valley, dubbed by Victorian holidaymakers as the “Fairy Glen” because of its magical woods and waterfalls.
Cross Sychnant Pass Road. Follow the NWP through the gateway directly ahead into the nature reserve, as indicated by a footpath sign, follow the path and take a sharp right turn to stay on the NWP. Continue along the clear grass path following the NWP signs. The path becomes a track after a ladder stile. Shortly after a sharp left turn at a wall you reach the point where the path starts to peel left away from the stone wall, at a path junction near a telegraph pole marked by a waypost (SH744756).
[4] Bear right here along the wall. The path grows progressively boggier as it yields ground, arriving after 10–15mins at the Afon Gyrach stream, which you cross via stones (at SH739754). In wet or icy conditions these stones can be slippery or submerged,you may need to follow the alternative route.
Clamber up the far bank and over the ladder stile ahead, then up the right side of the field beyond to a metal ladder stile. Having climbed over this, rather than head sharp left along the wall, bear diagonally left up the rise, on the far side of which you’ll find Ty’n-y-ffrith farm.
Alternatively stay on the NWP as it veers away from the wall and continues gradually up the valley becoming more path than track. Continue straight on over a stony patch as another path forks left. Turn right at a wall and ruined farmstead to drop down to the footbridge over the Afon Gyrach. Keep on the NWP until it forks left at a waymark post. (If you stayed on the NWP you could shorten the walk but you would miss the fantastic views from thew Jubilee Panoramic walk). Take the right fork over a ladder stile and follow the path until it meets the farm track joining from the right from Ty'n-y-Frith
[5] Beyond the farm buildings, an unsurfaced track swings right to the pass dividing Foel Lûs and Craig Hafodwen. Having joined another track arriving from the left,(The alternative route) look for a turning on your right, marked by a low stone post with a red “viewpoint” symbol (if you reach a plinth and bench on your left you’ve gone too far). This winds around the flank of Foel Lûs to Ffrid-y-foel farm.
(E) A phalanx of defunct volcanoes dominates this stretch of the walk, plunging sheer to the coast. Hidden in the heather halfway up the most prominent of them, Foel Lûs (“Bilberry Hill”), is the once famous Jubilee Panoramic Walk, a leisure path cut from the hillside in 1888 to mark Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. Traditionally entered through the pair of stone pillars on the southwest side of Foel Lûs, it proved an instant hit with visitors, though isn’t particularly well frequented today considering the fine views.
When the track bends sharply right down the side of the wall towards the farm, keep heading straight on. A short descent from here brings you to the start of the Jubilee Panoramic Walk, which leads off to the left following the alternative (red) WCP route .
[6] A pair of stone pillars mark the end of the Jubilee Walk. On reaching them, bear left up the hill on the WCP to the pass crossed earlier. Only this time, take the route to the right marked with a red cross symbol. The NWP joins from the left. Continue along the side of a stone wall to Bryn Derwydd. Having passed the house, the path veers right to pass through a gate, then left onto a broader track. Keep on this for 10 mins, heading towards the ridge until you reach a fork (at SH725748), where you should bear left on to a path cutting uphill to Maeni Hirion (“Druid’s Circle”) visible on the skyline.
(F) The most impressive of them is the Maeni Hirion, or “Long Stones”, circle. Sited alongside a major crossroads in the ancient trackway, it is also misleadingly known as the “Druid’s Circle”, even though the ring of thirty monoliths predated the emergence of Celtic Druidism by at least a few millennia. Excavations inside the enclosure revealed the cremated bones of a twelve-year-old boy buried next to a small bronze knife.
[7] Several other interesting Neolithic sites lie a short way South West of the stone circle, but to continue our walk, drop down the steep slope below the monument to rejoin the main track, turning left onto it to reach the corner of a large drystone wall. Follow this wall downhill a short way as far as an iron kissing gate, go through and across a boardwalk with a handrail then turn right from where an obvious path continues down the valley all the way to Graiglwyd Farm.
[8] Bear right to skirt around the farm buildings when you reach them. From the far side of the farm, a track runs down to a road. Turn left when you reach the tarmac, then right very soon after through a gate beneath a tree. The path drops straight down the field towards a ruin in the corner in an old hedgerow; pass through a gate (to the left of the hedge continuing downhill) and follow the track down to the bottom of the field and upper limits of Penmaenmawr. Once on Helyg Road, the first residential cul de sac you reach in the estate, bear left, then right at the end of it on to Cwm Road. This runs downhill to a junction; head straight on to Gilfach Road, which soon after reaches Penmaenmawr’s main street, Bangor Road. A final right turn here will take you to the bus stop for Conwy (on the left, north side of the street).
(G) Maeni Hirion marks the final turning point in our trail, which from here drops steeply downhill to its conclusion at Penmaenmawr. The seafront, with its promenade and broad sands sliced by lines of old wooden groynes, has been horribly disfigured since the A55 trunk road was upgraded to a dual-carriageway in 1991. Nowadays, the quarry town and former resort exudes the feel of somewhere that’s seen better days – which indeed it has. In the mid-nineteenth century, “Pen” ranked among the most desirable retreat on the Welsh coast. Gladstone and his family holidayed here a dozen times or more, inspiring waves of well-heeled tourists from across the country to follow in their wake. That they were able to do so was due largely to the construction of the North Wales Coast Railway, built in the 1850s along a route devised by Messers Stevenson and Telford. After the smoggy, industrial cities of Victorian Britain, the dazzling blue bay and backdrop of wooded valleys, mountains and cliffs that greeted new arrivals in Penmaenmawr must have seemed breathtakingly exotic.