We are on holiday in North Wales this week, and took a walk around the town of Beaumaris on the Isle of Anglesey for todays Wednesday walk !
We parked on one of the back streets and headed down towards the main street. The pic above is St Mary and St Nicholas's church, which was founded back in 1330. Although it has changed over the years, it still has a parts dating back to the 14th Century. Its really pretty, and I'll aim to cover it in more detail in a future post.
Its actually the church where my wife and I were married back in 2006, as my wife is Welsh, from the Isle of Anglesey.
The town is quite quaint and picturesque, and draws quite a lot of tourists. It has quite narrow streets with buildings and houses dating back to the 19th century and earlier.
Many of the buildings are brightly painted as well, which is really nice.
We stopped in this very important building above first - its an ice cream parlour !
With ice creams in hand, we visited a few shops on the high street.
The mock tudor building above is quite cool. It used to be a nice gallery, but is now an estate agents.
I really like this red brick building above as well which was built in 1892.
This is a nice corner shop, with gifts, sweets (candies) and the like.
We also found the post box above which is marked VR (Victoria Regina), so was put in place during the reign of Queen Victoria, who died in 1901, so is at least 121 years old, and still being used daily !
Beaumaris is right on the coast, so we also walked down to the sea front and along the pier. Although fairly stormy, the sea was a beautiful aqua colour. The body of water is called the Menai Straits, and separates the island from the mainland. Thats the Welsh county of Gwynedd on the mainland that you can see across the water, and unfortunately the clouds are covering the mountains.
The tide was out far enough to let me get under the pier for some pics.
The pic above shows the west side of the town seafront from the pier. And the picture below shows the east side.
The town is normally quite busy with tourists, and even on a cold day in February there were still quite a few around. The wind was really biting when we were on the pier, so we didnt hang around on it for long.
The building above is the main hotel in the town, the Buckley Hotel, which is where we held our wedding reception (dinner and dance). It looks out over the straits, and is quite nice inside.
The pic above was my attempt at an arty shot from under the pier !
After the pier, we then had some chips (french fries) from the fish and chip shop, before heading back home. The courtyard above has a really pretty collection of craft shops.
It was really nice to stop in and have a leisurely wander around, it really is a lovely wee town. It also has a fantastic castle at the east end (Beaumaris Castle), but we didnt have time to get to it. But we may stop in to do the castle in the morning, time permitting, on the last day of our vacation.
I'm glad to be able to present something a bit different for my wednesday walk this week ! If you are ever in the area, we definitely recommend you visit the town (including the ice cream shop, fish and chip shop, pier, castle and church).
