Beaumaris

Beaumaris punches well above its size when it comes to places to stay, a legacy of its Georgian and Victorian years as Anglesey's smartest town. At the top end sit a handful of genuinely distinctive addresses: a French-Gothic château overlooking the Menai Strait, a grand Georgian seafront hotel built for a royal visit, and a fifteenth-century coaching inn now run as a boutique townhouse with an award-winning kitchen. These suit anyone treating Beaumaris as the destination rather than a stopover, and most are within easy walking distance of the castle and the water.

In the middle of the market, Beaumaris keeps its pub-hotel tradition alive, with rooms above working bars on Castle Street and the seafront offering straightforward comfort, real ale, and some of the best-value views in town. These properties tend to suit couples and small groups who want a base close to the action without upmarket prices, and they double as some of the town's most reliable places to eat and drink of an evening.

At the more modest end, Beaumaris has a good spread of small guest houses and bed and breakfasts, several in historic townhouses just off the main streets, offering a handful of rooms, personal service and views across the strait to Snowdonia that larger hotels charge considerably more for. These suit couples on a short break and solo travellers who want a quieter, more personal stay.

Because Beaumaris is compact, location matters less for convenience than for outlook: a room facing the strait costs more but delivers one of the best views available from any small town in Wales, while a room a street back can be had for noticeably less without losing the five-minute walk to the castle, the pier and the restaurants. Booking ahead for summer weekends and market Sundays is advisable across every price bracket, since the town's total room count is modest relative to its popularity.

The castle dominates any visit, but Beaumaris has plenty else to fill a few days:

• Beaumaris Castle is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and widely regarded as the most technically perfect of Edward I's Welsh fortresses, built on a concentric "walls within walls" plan with its own tidal dock; climb the gatehouse for views over the strait to Snowdonia.
• Beaumaris Gaol and Courthouse give a vivid, sometimes grim, picture of Victorian justice on Anglesey, from the treadwheel and condemned cell to the courtroom where sentences were handed down; a combined ticket covers both.
• Beaumaris Pier is the natural focus of a family afternoon, with crab lines dangling from the railings, ice creams from the kiosk, and views along the strait toward the Menai Suspension Bridge.
• Puffin Island boat trips leave from the pier in season, running close to the seabird colonies and grey seal haul-outs off Anglesey's eastern tip without landing on the island itself.
• Beaumaris Artisan Market takes over the town every Sunday from Easter to the end of October, with Anglesey producers selling cheese, cakes, preserves and crafts alongside the usual market stalls.
• St Mary and St Nicholas Church is a quietly remarkable medieval building holding the stone coffin of Princess Joan, wife of Llywelyn the Great, moved here after Llanfaes friary was dissolved.
• Baron Hill, the roofless shell of the former Bulkeley family mansion on the wooded hillside above the town, can be glimpsed from public footpaths and adds a haunting note to a walk out of the centre.
• The Menai Strait shoreline path toward Penmon Point and its lighthouse gives some of the best walking on this side of Anglesey, with views back across the water to Puffin Island and the Great Orme.

Seafood is the local strength, with crab and mussels landed from the Menai Strait turning up on menus across town, and Anglesey Sea Salt, produced nearby at Brynsiencyn, appearing as a finishing touch in several kitchens. Ye Olde Bulls Head Inn's Townhouse Brasserie has built a strong reputation on this local produce, while the Liverpool Arms and Castle Court Hotel keep the town's pub tradition going with real ale and simpler, well-priced food.

The Beaumaris Artisan Market on Sundays, running from Easter to the end of October, is the best single stop for local cheese, cakes, preserves and other Anglesey produce, and cafes along Castle Street fill up around it for coffee and cake between stalls. For an easy pier-side treat, an ice cream while watching the crabbing lines is as much a Beaumaris tradition as anything on a restaurant menu.

Beaumaris itself has no campsite within the town, but Anglesey's gentle east coast around it is well provided for, and none of the options below is more than a short drive from the castle and the pier. The island's farmland setting, quiet lanes and proximity to sandy beaches make it reliable camping and touring country, without the crowds that build up around the more famous Snowdonia sites across the strait, and the flat, sheltered terrain suits touring outfits of every size.

The nearest option, a couple of miles outside Beaumaris, is a small, family-run touring park with a loyal following built over years of conservation awards rather than flashy extras, suiting couples and families who want a quiet base with the town a short drive or cycle away. Further round the coast toward Benllech and Marian-glas, larger parks add heated pools, shops and play areas alongside their touring and camping pitches, better suited to families wanting more to do without leaving the site, and within easy reach of some of the island's best sandy beaches.

Closer to the Britannia Bridge, a small touring site set within a farm's walled garden gives easy access back onto the mainland and into Bangor, useful for anyone splitting a trip between Anglesey and Snowdonia, or simply wanting a quiet overnight stop between the two. Across all three, expect touring and motorhome pitches with electric hook-ups as standard, tents welcomed at some but not all, and a generally quieter, more traditional style of camping than the coast's bigger holiday parks further along toward Snowdonia's more crowded gateway towns.