In 2014, G and I decided to go walking together again, but we couldn’t afford to take the four or five weeks out of work to walk St Olav’s Way, and decided to start on a slow circling of Wales instead, following the Wales Coast Path. The pictures looked good, it wasn’t too hard (though it finally leads to Offa’s Dyke, so you really can walk around the country), and we could do it in sections. So we packed our camping-training gear, pooled our pennies and started from Chester one beautiful sunny day.
Alas, the Wales Coast Path should have been renamed the Wales Cycle Path. It is, at least from the Chester end, more or less tarmac cycle path all the way. 
Yes, the coastline is pretty …
yes there are castles (yay!) …
and yes, there are strange and wonderful things to see …
but there is just too much hard surface underfoot. 
When that is said, the path seems to be used by cyclists, dog walkers, day walkers, families etc, so you do meet others and the whole project seems to have been embraced by the locals. Not a lot of other backpackers!
I remember meeting holiday makers in the tin town caravan parks in and around Rhyl and while talking to them thought, with no doubt mutual bemusement: Why, oh why, would anyone want to spend their holiday like that?
For us it was this …
and this …
and this …
and this …
Not really this.
Yet again there were campsites, but not really anywhere to pitch a tent in any good way, so we ended up in B&Bs, hotels etc. I don’t mind … I am on holiday! We stayed at a beach hotel in Prestatyn, walked along the beach promenade in Rhyl, visited the smallest chapel in Britain, St. Trillo’s chapel in Rhos-on-Sea …
walked into the elegant sweeping bay of Llandudno where we visited the Great Orme and shared a posh bunk bed room … 
and finally into beautiful Conwy.
And sadly, when we got to Conwy, we’d had enough and the good old PF was playing up again. So we had a good meal, some vino medicino, and decided to spend a day enjoying the tea houses, pubs and sights of this little walled town before setting off to the forest paths of Betws-y-Coed instead!
More of that later. We still haven’t given up on the idea of surrounding the Welsh though, and walking around Angelsey is still on the cards in the future.
Somewhere Slowly 