Criccieth Walk

I’m falling behind in my quest to document all the amazing walks I took this summer! The last installment was about our walk around Llyn Geirionydd.

Our next big walk was about a week later (early June) in Criccieth. Why Criccieth? My parents took a side trip there last year, and enjoyed it enough that they gave my husband a gift certificate to Dylan’s in Criccieth to encourage us to visit. (We’ve told them several times about how much we enjoy their Menai Bridge restaurant.) We’d been waiting for a nice weekend to take advantage of that gift certificate, and in a happy coincidence my parents were able to join us on our trip.

So off we went to Criccieth, where we followed a circular walk through Criccieth and Llanystumdwy. The walk is supposedly 7 km but we did that thing where you start and end at slightly different points from the planned walk and ended up walking a couple extra kilometers. Thankfully, the extra bit at the beginning meant walking along the coast past Criccieth Castle:

After passing some fascinating castle-like houses along the path, we stumbled across this curious “home” on the beach:

We then turned inland and started to make our way up the river Dwyfor:

Walking through fields brought us into Llanystumdwy. Somehow, when I found this walk, I entirely missed that this village was the hometown of Prime Minister David Lloyd George (so far the only prime minister from Wales). We took a short break to visit a monument at his grave:

Finally, we turned back toward Criccieth, walking along a lane full of rhododendrons and down a hill toward the seaside:

If you look closely you might be able to just make out the shape of Harlech Castle on the opposite shoreline. We haven’t been there yet — I’ll have to visit it the next time we visit that part of the country.