Day 8: 3/5/86 Bangor to Red Wharf

Distance:  31.5km (19.6 miles)    Total Distance:   90 miles

I drove up from Coventry to North Wales the previous night (Friday) and stayed with an aunt of mine in Bangor.  After breakfast I drove down to the pier at Bangor and began another year of coastal path walking. 

My first view of Menai Bridge - through some barbed wire

Menai Bridge - looks a long way up there

I walked mainly along the sea front to Menai Bridge, past the university rowing clubhouse. Menai Bridge is in amazingly good condition considering it was built in the 1830s – no rust at all.

I had a choice to make when approaching the bridge - do I cross it or stick to the mainland.  Having already thought about this a fair bit I decided to cross it.  My rule was to be that if an island was connected to the mainland by a bridge then I would walk around it.

View down the Manai Straits

From the bridge I headed north to Beaumaris, mainly along the road as there private houses blocking the way to the foreshore. I did manage to get down to the front for the last mile. I bought a pint of milk off a local milk float.  The morning was showery and I learnt later that it was the day that most of the radioactive cloud had been over Britain arising from the nuclear accident in Chernobyl.

Back over the strait and Bangor Pier

I bought some sweets and pop in Beaumaris but did not see too much of the castle.  From there up to the headland at Puffin Island I was able to mainly walk along the front.  I got chased by a crazy pack of dogs at Trwyn y Penrhyn and had to scramble over seaweed clad roots at the headland itself. 

Beaumaris Castle on a damp day.

Looking back across to at the North Wales mountains

A disused factory just north of Beaumaris

Puffin Island

Puffin Island with the Grear Orme in the background

I tried to keep to the coastline but the quarry near Trwyn Dinmor proved impossible to go past fully.  I had enough of trespassing by the time I got to Bwrrdd Arthur so cut inland and then down the hill to the start of Red Wharf Bay.  From here on I decided to try and not trespass too much mainly because some farmer’s hedges and fences were impregnable!

Red Wharf Bay - looking rather blue

A wonderful café caravan, which served large mugs of milky coffee, owned by a Cheshire bloke was situated at the start of the bay.  I walked around the bay having to keep to the sea wall for quite a while. 

This was part of the same walk I had done with the scouts many years earlier when camping at the Bangor international jamboree. It was a walk where a group of three of us were dropped off somewhere, carrying all our provisions and tent and told to where we could camp for the night.  I recall stopping at a house and asking for a drink as we'd obviously not bought enough water, only to be given bottles of Canada Dry, not thirst quenching at all.  That night the area was hit by a storm.  We survived OK but the jamoree site at Bangor suffered and half the tents got flattened. Someone was sent out to check on us the following morning only to find us sound asleep in the tent and a slug crawling over my face. 

I got two lifts back to Bangor, one from a pensioner and one from a gambling machine repairman with a series of hospital stories.  That night I camped at Dinas campsite, near Bangor.  I went into Bangor that night after popping in to see yet another uncle.