Llŷn Peninsula / Pen Llŷn

Hello again people and pooches. Joe the Cocker here after a day travelling around the Llyn Peninsula coastal roads. We were staying in a holiday cottage in Talsarnau, just outside of Porthmadog. The cottage has an amazing view across the Afon Dwyryd to Portmeirion. 

We set off at 8:30 am. so that we could have a full day of exploration with our first port of call being Criccieth. It was only a short hop of 10 miles. Just as I had drifted off into a post-breakfast snooze, I was rudely awakened and dragged against my will ŏfrom my sleeping place in the back of the car. Rude!

Parking was easy in a side street with it being midweek and outside of the holiday season. Our parking place was next to a postbox with a knitted hat. The high winds of the previous day had subsided, leaving a chilly but sunny forecast for our little jaunt.

Criccieth is a pretty coastal town overlooked by an awesome castle built by Lewellyn ap Iorwerth in the 13th century and later added to by his grandson, Llewellyn ap Gruffydd. Edward I attacked and took over the castle during his invasion of Wales. Then, in 1404, Owain Glyndwr attacked the castle and removed the English with the town becoming Welsh once more.

Before we had a mooch around the town, we headed downhill to the beach. If you read my blogs, you will know by now that beaches are my happy place. This beach, however, was a bit of a disappointment to me. The sand was mostly hidden under pebbles and rocks. So, no zoomies for me! Why would humans cover up perfectly good sand with stones? My human said that it was a natural phenomenon. I’m not so sure!

Criccieth has two beaches separated by the headland that the castle sits on. The pebbly beach is the eastern beach with the western or Marine Beach being more sandy.

On our return home, my human discovered that it looks like we broke the rules about pooches on Criccieth Beach. Apparently, we are banned from 1st April to 30th September on most of the beach. Oops! My human apologises.

Overlooking Cardigan Bay with the Llyn Peninsula on the right, the town faces south and is warmed by the Gulf Stream, providing an ideal seaside resort.

My human wanted me to stand behind a pile of pebbles so that it created the illusion that I had stacked them. As I have already stated, I am a fan of sandy and not stoney beaches. So, I played hard to get!

We walked to the small harbour and boat launch before we wandered into the town.

The town streets are lined with small sandstone cottages, many of which were occupied by sea fishermen in its heyday.

The castle was closed. Parts of the castle are dog friendly, but we prefer the outside anyway.

As we reached the top of the castle road, we found a bench with a view over Marine Beach. Multicoloured houses line Marine Terrace, which overlooks the sandy beach below.

Sheltered from the prevailing westerly wind, the beach next to the headland is a popular family spot in the summer. We didn’t venture down there as we wanted to visit other beaches on our day out. It turned out to be another dog free zone anyway.

The little side streets are well worth meandering through with their sandstone walls and brightly painted woodwork.

We walked back into the centre of the town, passing under the castle again. And so, we jumped back into the car. Our next stop was Pwllheli. My dad remembers it from a holiday in Butlins when he was a sprog!

We passed the original Butlins Holiday Camp on our way into Pwllheli. It is now owned by Haven Holidays and called Hafan y Môr. We parked by the harbour and walked into the town. It is a market town and not as quaint as nearby Criccieth. My human wanted to find a pet shop. It was my birthday on the following day, so I think that I had worked out the link. We only stayed for half an hour or so because we had a lot to see and do ahead of us.

Abersoch was our next stop off, which is a 25-minute drive from Criccieth. Abersoch is a pretty little village that is very popular in the summer season. It is renowned for its internationally famous sailing waters for its beautiful beaches and its bars, restaurants, and shops.

My human loved the harbour and beach area with its Meditteranean feel. The weather was amazing during our visit and we had the village to ourselves, almost!

The Afon Soch divides the beach area and provides a safe harbour for the many small boats huddled along its estuary.

It was soon time for yours truly to have a play on the beach. Pooches beware! There are some restricted areas from April to September.

The Harbour Beach is large and flat, making it a great area for pooch zoomies!

The beach was so empty, and I was allowed to have a good run around before we went for a walk around the village.

My human has visited Abersoch before I was born. He said that last time he came here it was a hot mid-summers day and it was Bedlam. We were so lucky to be able to see the place on a sunny day with no crowds of people.

We could have spent the day in Abersoch as there is some nice coastal walks and more beaches to play on but this was a whistlestop tour to discover some places to revisit later in the year.

We headed back to the car after saying goodbye to the beach. On the way through the village my human stopped at a small bakery to buy bread for his breakfast on the next morning. Then I had to sit outside of the local butchers shop while he bought sausages, bacon and black pudding for the brekky. He had better share some with me or there will be trouble ahead!

Our next stop was at Aberdaron on the western tip of the peninsula. It was approximately a half-hour drive, giving me time to catch up on my beauty sleep. The former fishing village is nowadays a holiday hot spot.

We parked in the National Trust car park in the centre of the village which is only a few hundred yards from the beac.

After crossing the stone bridge over the Afon Daron, there are a few shops, The Ship Inn and a few other eateries.

We headed towards the beach as we passed through the tiny village.

Just off the road is Yr Hen Bost, a house designed by Clough Williams-Ellis, who designed the village of Portmeirion. It was once the village post office.

I think that my human was teasing me as we walked past the entrance to the beach. Instead, he spent time admiring St. Hywyn’s Church or Eglwys Hywyn Sant. It is a 12th century building on a site of a 5th century clas church. It became an embarkation point for pilgrims sailing to the nearby Bardsey Island / Ynys Enlli in the Middle Ages.

It has become a tradition to take a pebble from the beach and to inscribe it with a dedication to a loved one. The pebble would be added to a cairn inside of the church. A pile has now appeared at the gate to the churchyard. Periodically, they are returned to the sea.

Finally, it was beach time for me. The beach stretches for a mile on the shore of Cardigan Bay in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). This is another of the beaches in the area that have restrictions for dogs, so beware!

The view across the bay is spectacular with Ynys Gwylan Fawr and Bach, the two rocky islands just offshore.

We spent the next half hour playing on the beach. Well, I did!

I wanted to have a little dip in the sea, but the big feller kept shouting to me to come back. I think that he doesn’t trust my swimming capabilities. He is a misery guts!

I had to be content with a paddle in the shallowest of shallow surf!

We headed back to the car so that we could drive to our next destination for lunch.

Five minutes drive towards our next stop, my human spotted a very colourful shed by the side of the road in Rhoshirwaun. It was an ‘honesty box’ set up selling homemade produce. Y Cwt Wyau (the Egg Hut) operates an honesty system where you pay for your goods via a contactless machine or cash in a letter box. My human couldn’t resist the carrot cake and he said that it was the freshest and best ever!

Sadly, one low-life took advantage of the honesty system in 2023. She took £100 worth of produce and left only a few coins. Fortunately, she was tracked down due to the CCTV footage that showed her in the act. If you are ever in the area, I can’t recommend too highly the quality and range of beautiful produce.

Our next stop off was on the northern coast of the Llyn Peninsula at Porthdinllaen, near to Nefyn. The area is also designated an AONB. The tiny coastal hamlet is only accessible by walking from a car park in Morfa Nefyn for twenty minutes. At low tide, the hamlet can be reached by a beach walk or through a golf course and across a cliff walk. We initially parked in the public car park by the golf club. My human and other people had problems with the parking machine and the app that you can use to pay online. So we drove back along the lane to the National Trust car park. My human needed £5 in coins to pay the fee. He only had £4.80 so he had to download another app to pay. Finally, after my human had used a few choice words, he paid, and we set off for Porthdinllaen.

As we were walking, he received a phone call from his bank saying that he was the victim of an attempted scam where a payment had been attempted to take from his debit card. The payment had been declined, fortunately. He thought thet this was the end of the problem. Nah!

We followed the footpath across the golf club, remembering to keep an eye out for low flying golf balls. This took us to the cliffs above the coast of the Irish Sea.

Rather than turning right, we chose to take a left turn so that we could investigate the rugged coastline. The coastal path overlooks some rocky coves with pebble beaches. It is a beautiful coastline.

We walked for half a mile before we turned around. I had to stay on-lead due to the proximity of the golf course and the crumbling cliff tops.

The beaches on the western side of the promontory are very pebbly, so I was looking forward to walking to the eastern side where the beaches are sandy.

After a short walk along Lon Golff, a rough track, we turned right to head downhill to Porthdinllaen.

I suddenly realised why we had walked to this tiny hamlet. The world famous Ty Coch Inn was to be my humans lunch stop. The remote pub was judged as being the 3rd best beach bar in the world in 2013! The setting for the red brick former vicarage in nothing short of spectacular.

The pub sits on the sandy beach with views across the Irish Sea and Yr Eifl. It was built in 1823 and has been an inn since 1842.

The inn is one of a handful of buildings in the village which can only be reached by vehicle by residents. This doesn’t deter people from visiting the beach and pub. Even on our visit there were about 30 visitors. During the summer months, the pub gets incredibly busy regardless of the 20-minute walk from the nearest parking spot.

The pub is dog-friendly and also serves food. The kitchen was only open from 12 until 2:30 on our visit. My human ordered his food and a pint. That is when the debit card saga started. He attempted to pay with his phone. Payment was declined, and the barman informed him that the card had been voided! As it was a new phone, he had not loaded other debit or credit cards on it. As I said earlier, he only had £4.80 in cash with him. He was about to cancel his food when he thought that he would attempt to pay with his actual debit card. Success! The card was accepted (the only one he had with him). Actually, it should aldo have been declined, but, hey-ho, it worked.

So, after he had got himself all stressed up, we went outside to sit in the sunshine. The bay is sheltered from the wind, and it felt like a summer day. My human enjoyed his pint while he waited for his tuna baguette. I enjoyed a bucket! of water. He spent the next 15 minutes on the phone to his bank attempting to sort out his predicament. What a drama queen!

The views from our perch on the sea wall were stunning as my human kept repeating. We vowed to return. We headed back to the car as my human mulled over how he was going to pay for deisel, food, and car parking.

Our final stop over of the day was Porthmadog at just over an half hour drive away. We concentrated on walking around the harbour area because we had a walk planned around the town for another day.

The harbour is a pretty area of the busy town and forms a great starting point for a coastal walk to Borth y Gest and beyond.

Not to be missed is a short walk along the banks of Llyn Bach for the views to Eryri / Snowdonia.

One final photograph of me at the harbour in Porthmadog before we left to return to the holiday cottage. It had been a full day. We enjoyed it, and we will definitely be returning. Till the next time!