TRAVEL

PALS & PATHWAYS…

PAUL MILES discovers new friends alongside beautiful coastal scenery as he joins a walking group on a wonderful Welsh route

From Holyhead Mountain, the interior of the Isle of Anglesey looks starkly flat against the backdrop of Snowdonia’s peaks. In fact, this ‘mountain’ is only 220m high but clambering to its limestone summit takes your breath away. The views from the top, to the busy port of Holyhead with its long snaking breakwater, and out to the Irish Sea, are a highlight of Anglesey’s 135-mile coastal path.

At a leisurely pace, you could complete the whole circumference in a fortnight, hefting your tent and stove or staying in a succession of B&Bs. The days of carrying all my gear are behind me now. Instead, I slept each night in the same hotel bed and enjoyed chauffeur-driven transport to and from each day’s route. By the end of the week, I’d covered 64 miles, visiting edited highlights of the island’s coast.

Waymarker of Anglesey coast path shows a Sandwich tern;

Ynys Llanddwyn, off south coast of Anglesey;

Beach near Moelfre.

I was on an organised walking holiday – courtesy of specialists HF Holidays – staying at a hotel in Beaumaris, which meant not only did I not need to carry luggage, I didn’t need to plan. It was a formula that worked well for everyone.

“We were trying to work out how to walk around Anglesey, using car and buses and B&Bs,” explains Derek - a lean and wiry hiker in his early eighties - as we tramp along a clifftop path. “But it was far too complicated to organise. Then I saw this trip advertised in the Sunday papers and…here we are.”

Derek and his wife, Yvonne, were, like me, new to group walking holidays. Most of the others in our happy band of 13 had been on several similar trips. ‘An organised walking holiday makes everything easy’ was the general refrain. That easiness refers to logistics of course, not the walking. Ynys Môn - the Welsh name for the Isle of Anglesey - may have a relatively flat interior but its coast is a rollercoaster in parts. The varied geology - the island is one of only seven UNESCO global geoparks in the UK - manifests itself in rugged cliffs of schist, limestone and granite on the west and north coasts, sloping down to a soft, low sand and pebble edge in the east.

In our week’s walking we reached the westernmost, northernmost and easternmost extremities of the county. With our Welsh-speaking guide, Rhian Roberts, forever cheerful and full of fun, we visited holy sites - churches, priories and wells with magical stories of early saints - and identified countless wildflowers, from flowering thyme to yellow tormentil and several species of orchid.

From gorse-clad cliffs we watched porpoises arcing through the sea and spie