Most people who visit Llandudno focus on the Great Orme. It looms over the town, and there are so many ways to enjoy it: driving around the edge on Marine Drive, walking up to the top, taking the tram or the cable car. It certainly held my attention for many months.
But as you walk along the promenade in Llandudno, you may notice the Little Orme sitting at the other end of the bay. Although only minutes away by car, it seems like a distant land:
We finally decided to explore the Little Orme over Easter weekend. It happened more or less by chance — I had suggested an inland walk and my husband had convinced me to walk farther down the coast, but as we drove toward that trail we ran into increasingly thick fog. I had been looking forward to a sunny afternoon adventure, so we turned around and chased the sun into Llandudno. Having already explored most of the Great Orme, we settled on a completely unplanned walk around the Little Orme.
As it turned out, the fog had found its way to us:
But we walked on, and we found ourselves surrounded by the smell of coconut. It caught me completely off guard until I realized it was coming from the gorse flowers around us:
As we walked over the hill and down toward the bay side of the Little Orme, we encountered the fog in full force:
The most amazing part was how every cliff turned into the most dramatic drop-off you’d ever seen, simply because the fog hid whatever lay beyond the edge. We caught sight of a rainbow in the fog and my husband captured this panorama:
Although I knew — based on the trail and the voices I heard rising out of the mist — that there was ground below the edge of those cliffs, it really felt like standing at the edge of the world. But down we went, descending into a layer of fog right at the edge of the water.
And finally, like waking from a dream, we walked out of the park, out of the fog, and back toward our car in the full afternoon sun.
Expat Linguist 