Climbing at Rhoscolyn, Holy Island, Anglesey (Crown copyright 2018 / Visit Wales)
Looking for some Great British adventure inspiration? You're in the right place. Here you'll get an independent, ad-free lowdown on Britain's top 50 adventure locations - the online yin to the paper yang of our Joyously Busy Great British Adventure Map.
Why Go To Anglesey & LlEYn Peninsula?
Anglesey and the Llŷn Peninsula are two Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and prime watersports country. Just some of things you can do on Anglesey and the Llŷn Peninsula that you can't do anywhere else...
Enjoy two entirely coastal AONBs at the north-western reaches of Wales beyond the much busier Snowdonia
Start or finish an epic long-distance cycling route
Fill your wetsuit boots with all manner of surfing, windsurfing and kitesurfing
Get to - or just look at - mysterious Bardsey Island just off the southern end of the Llŷn Peninsula
Want to find out more? Read on for great photos, articles, videos, top tips and other content to fire up your adventure appetite. Got a question? Ask away.
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Anglesey is the outpost, joined to the mainland in 1826 by Telford's Menai Suspension Bridge. With glorious beaches sprinkled along a coastline that's almost entirely AONB, Wales' largest island is a wondrous watersports location. Two great long-distance cycling routes also start / finish here. Highest point: Holyhead Mountain (220m). Across the Menai Strait, heading south, you come to the luscious Llyn peninsula. Visitors to nearby Snowdonia often don't venture this far, but it's another AONB and a great stretch of coastline with sandy beaches aplenty, fine surf and the wild, enigmatic Bardsey Island teasingly close to the south-west tip.
There are several essential journeys beginning or ending in Anglesey. Two long-distance cycle routes, the Lon Las Cymru (split into North and South) and the North Wales Coastal Route begin / end at Holyhead. For walkers, the Wales Coast Path takes in the entire perimeter, i.e. all the best bits!
Kitesurfing at Rhosneigr, Anglesey (Crown copyright 2018 / Visit Wales)
Getting To Anglesey & LlEYn Peninsula, Maps & Guides
Getting there: A 5-hour drive from London, and over 4 hours from Cardiff. Train from Cardiff takes many more hours, loops back a long way through England. 5.5 hrs by train from London.
Travel times from where you are: See Anglesey and the Llŷn Peninsula on Google Maps.
Maps: Find the right Ordnance Survey maps and / or get a month's free subscription to their excellent OS Maps app.
Guidebooks: No dedicated guidebooks - best bet is the Rough Guide to Wales or Lonely Planet's equivalent.
Walking route guidance: have a look at the Wales Coast Path's Anglesey and Llŷn Peninsula sections.
Tourist board: Split between Visit Anglesey and Visit Wales' pages for the Llŷn Peninsula and Anglesey.
More Anglesey and Lleyn Peninsula Adventure Inspiration
Here's a good article from Wanderlust on walking around the Llŷn Peninsula. Read about a trip to Bardsey Island (Ynys Enlli, aka the "Island of 20,000 Saints") in Robert MacFarlane's excellent book The Wild Places. Or hear from the caretaker of Bardsey in this brief chat from the Chris Evans Radio 2 show.
The Scrappy Doo of hills, Yr Eifl is listed as one of The Great Outdoors Magazine's 12 Little Hills in Britain with Big Impact. Quite the accolade.
Anglesey is one of Rough Guides' "6 places in Wales you must visit in 2018". Alright, bossypants. Ahead of the curve by a few years, the BBC's Ramblings podcast went there in this episode with the North Wales Gay Outdoor Club. Also via the BBC, comedian Tudur Owen loves a bit of Anglesey - having seen it missed off maps, here are his Seven surprising things you didn’t know about Anglesey.
And lastly, if you're still not convinced, Abersoch Life Magazine's Instagram account will do the trick.
“An aerial showcase” of the Llyn Peninsula
A short time-lapse of sunset over South Stack Lighthouse, Holy Island, Anglesey
Sailing on the Menai Strait (Crown copyright 2018 / Visit Wales)
What Next?
Click here to see 49 other Great British adventure locations and tell us about your adventures, plans and suggestions for these pages.
Britain's Best Outdoorsy Bits... Mapped!
Liking what you see, but fancy keeping it old school with an actual paper map? Our Joyously Busy Great British Adventure Map features all of Britain's best outdoorsy bits (including the Top 50), plus some enjoyably random and vaguely useful stuff too. Available either as a 2-sided fold-out map or a framed wall map (office furniture and fake plants not included).
