Anglesey Weekend

Friday 17 - Sunday 19 July

Jane, Donna and Hilary.

Friday 17 July
We managed to set off at a responsible time, about 6.30pm, but met lots of traffic as the A54 met the A51, fortunately we got to the junction easily so we turned onto the A51 which was full of stationary traffic for as far as we could see. The weekend traffic had started, everyone was trying to get away.

We went on the back lanes to join the A41 to Christleton and on to the A55. We moved quite quickly until we crossed the boundary into Wales. There had been an accident on the A55 so the traffic was backed up. We crawled along, eventually we came off onto the A5151 to move a little quicker towards Anglesey. We rejoined the A55 and made good progress.

We arrived at about 9.10pm, as I had told the site owners we would be there for 9pm we did arrive in good enough time, although I had hoped to be there for about 8.30pm. We had our wheelbarrows ready to go when we went to tell the owners we had arrived.

The tipi didn't look too inviting in the semi dark. There were fairy lights around the inside of the tipi so we turned them on, they made the tipi look pretty. 

We went to have a look at the composting toilets. Washing your hands was interesting as there was a wooden box and you had to press a piece of wood at the bottom to pump the water, and there was a soap on a rope so that you could wash your hands, it was most ingenious.

Donna had a go at lighting the fire in the wood burning stove, we had no paper so Donna went and found a newspaper in the recycling bin that she could use, how clever!. 
But as it was late we let it go out.
The sky was very clear so the night was cold. Donna was too cold overnight so she had a problem sleeping.

Saturday 18 July  Llaneilian Walk should have been 7.75miles we did 8.5 miles

I made the ham sandwiches and then the cooked breakfast of egg, bacon, sausages, cherry tomatoes and potato cakes. We were able to sit outside and eat at the picnic table.
A beautiful sunny day

We drove to Porth Eilian and parked in the free parking place and then walked down to the sea. The rocky bay looked inviting on this bright sunny day.
We added about 0.25 miles to our walk when we went to Point Lynas to look at the Lighthouse and cottages, they were for sale at £1,375,000!!!!

Hilary and Donna saw a dolphin playing in the water at Point Lynas.

We returned to the path we needed to take to follow the coastal path. We walked along the coast watching the large ships out at sea carrying their cargoes waiting to land them.  

We followed the more obvious path so we went the wrong way. When I stopped to read the directions again on the next page it said to be careful NOT to do that!! Too late.

Once we were back on the correct route, we sat for a short while at Porth Helygen with other people watching the seals below in the water.

We were about to walk along a section of road so we decided to stop for lunch where we could sit in a field and enjoy the view.

The cows in the next field were running about - didn't want to go in the field! So walked around on the roads

A warm day and as Hilary had forgotten her water bottle so Donna shared one of her two bottles of water with her. So it was useful to get water from the farm house we passed on our detour.

Evening - It is a good job that we didn't walk to the pub along the road because the pub was busy and short staffed and we would have had to have waited an hour and a half for food. We went to Meolfre, there are queues outside the fish and chip shop and the pub by the harbour was busy. We were looking for Ty Dderw, as the owners of the tipi site had said it had views of the sea but we couldn't find it (we did eventually noticed it when we were leaving Moelfre later that evening, we had been expecting it to be directly overlooking the sea, so we were looking in the wrong place!).
 
We did manage to get a table at Ann's Pantry, and have lovely meals of lemon sole and pork loin. 

Donna had set the fire before we left so all she had to do was light it when we got back from our meal. We got a bit too hot!

It rained heavily in the night, I half woke a couple of times knowing I would need to go to the toilet but as the rain was drumming on the tipi I thought I would wait. Eventually at about 4am I decided I couldn't wait any longer so I put on my trousers and rain jacket and faced the wind and the rain. Actually it wasn't as bad as it sounded, I made it to the composting toilet and back without getting very wet at all.

Sunday 19 July Moelfre walk 4 miles

Breakfast was the bits and pieces that we had! 

As it turned out to be another beautiful day we decided to do a walk from Traeth Lligwy along the coast to Meolfre. The beach car park at Lligwy is £2.50,  the beach is covered in golden sand.

We found out about the Royal Charter, a clipper that was wrecked on the rocks by Porth Helaeth in October 1859, it had travelled all the way from Melbourne only to be wrecked close to shore and not far from Liverpool its destination. Over 400 people died.

We visited the RNLI visitor centre in Moelfre, and watched some old footage of This Is Your Life showing Richard Evans, the former lifeboat coxswain, receiving the red book. 

On deciding where to have lunch Ann's Pantry seemed to be the best choice, and we had soup and corn bread.

The new £10m RNLI station at Meolfre was open on our way back so we went inside to see the new boat - RNLB Kiwi.  Moelfre's £2.7m new lifeboat has been named RNLB Kiwi after Reginald James Clark, a New Zealander, who died in June 2004 and left £2.2m to the RNLI in his will.

Decided to walk back along the coast rather than along the roads, so we retraced our steps.
We had ice cream from the shop on the beach at Lligwy.