I Guess We’ll Make it a Day Trip: Portmeirion & Anglesey, Wales

Many of the adventures I’ve shared have started with something to the effect of, “I didn’t plan a lot, or very far in advance, but actually it all worked out!” Our luck was bound to run out.

Last week was another half-term break for the boys, and we didn’t schedule much besides football camp, but decided we should head somewhere this past weekend. It’s June and the beach was calling. But where? There are beautiful shorelines everywhere, though it is several hours to the warmer beaches in the south of England. Several people had recommended Anglesey in Wales to us – less than a two hour drive, stunning beaches and the mountains of Snowdonia National Park rising in the distance.

I searched all of the usual Internet sites, plus more, for places to stay – hotels, home rentals, cottages, cabins, caravans, tents, YURTS! I looked for yurts. I was not coming up with many options, likely due to the half-term break. This search continued most of last week until on Thursday, with time running low, we finally picked a good-enough spot.

We requested the cottage through a site we hadn’t used before, discovering too late that we didn’t technically “reserve” the cottage; rather, it just sent a request to the host who can then take a day to confirm or deny our reservation. We assumed all would be fine – who wouldn’t want a paying guest if your place was available?

Friday morning came and we had heard nothing about the reservation. Tim went to work, planning to meet us in Anglesey that night. I showed the boys where I was taking them that day – an underground cave exhibit about King Arthur’s Labyrinth, also in Wales. I had been looking at it that week, but wanted to make sure they were interested and it didn’t look too scary. With their enthusiastic approval, I went to book tickets, and discovered that were now sold out for the day. Whoops.

Down but not out, I thought I would still take the boys on to Anglesey and enjoy the beach before getting to our cottage. I started to pack. Bennett and Nate each packed a suitcase. I packed beach things, hiking things, footballs, towels, sandwiches, fruit and granola bars…all while hitting refresh on my email.

The boys were getting eager, so we loaded the car and buckled in. As we were getting ready to drive out, there was a ding on my phone. Our lodging reservation had been denied. I sat there, not sure what to do. It didn’t make a lot of sense to drive to the beach if we had nowhere to stay and nowhere for Tim to meet us. Whoops again.

We pulled our luggage back out of the car, feeling defeated. As the boys ate their packed lunches, I started to look for new places to stay before deciding that it wasn’t worth it. A day trip it would be, on Saturday, when Tim could join us. The boys were disappointed, but I invited a friend and her son over for a play date and while the boys played we had a glass of prosecco and chatted. The day was salvaged.

However, I’ve decided that the easy, breezy, take it as it comes! attitude I was trying to adopt is no longer fruitful. Back to planning. Is that the longest intro ever about a trip that hadn’t even started yet?

On Saturday, we got past the driveway (!) and headed to a town called Portmeirion. It’s a planned tourist village that was designed by architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis and built between 1925 and 1975. It takes inspiration from Mediterranean villages – some have said Portfofino, Italy. Buildings have a Mediterranean and or art deco feel, and are colored sunny yellows, coral-y pinks and tropical blues. It’s been the location for many music videos, movie shots and an entire British spy sci-fi show from the 1960s.

We arrived there after a long and windy journey through Snowdonia National Forest. It was a pretty drive, but those windy roads always make me feel a bit queasy. We pulled into a large, gravel parking lot and I wasn’t quite sure what we had come to. You couldn’t really see much, besides a few buildings and the woods around.

We paid the (rather steep) entrance fee and worked our way between buildings as the village started to unfold before us. Recorded harp music played, and we walked onto a street with cute little shops and buildings, and staircases leading to second-floor cottages. There was a courtyard with a reflection pool and fountain, a life-size chess board with intricately-carved wooden pieces, and palm trees and blooming flowers everywhere. It was like stepping into another place or time. You knew better than to believe you were in Italy, but it was just enough of an ambience to allow you to imagine it could be so.

We ate lunch al fresco at the village’s Italian restaurant before hopping on the trolley that took us for a 15-minute ride through the surrounding woodlands. It stopped halfway so we could take photos from the gazebo at the top of the hill. The trolley ride showcased a large pond filled with water lilies, flowering trees, and trails leading off to various hiking paths. The boys sat by each other and silently watched each element of nature with respect and awe. I’m kidding, they mostly just tried to make each other giggle by saying potty words.

From there, we headed to the beach where they skipped rocks onto the low water of the river and enjoyed the sun. Portmeirion is also known for their pottery, so I browsed the shops but nothing caught my eye for me, and any gift I wanted to give I imagined trying to cram carefully in a suitcase during a plane ride home. Sorry, Mom.

We walked, taking in the sights. Everywhere we looked, people were eating ice cream, so we ordered ours and sat by the reflective pool, breathing in the (non) tropical air. The boys ran from space to space on the chess board, acting out a game of chess. It was a lovely afternoon in the village, somewhere I would return if I had a visitor who wanted a unique and pretty day trip, but maybe not with the boys.

Ready for our next adventure, we headed to Anglesey, an isle in Northwest Wales – specifically, Trearddur Bay. We pulled into the town in the late afternoon and the parking lot looked pretty empty. When we had pictured a June beach day, we pictured warm weather and sun. We didn’t have either. It was about 60 and overcast, but I’ve watched Bennett and Nate jump into the ocean at much colder temperatures!

We walked down to the beach, a crescent-shape bay protected by rocky shores on each side. Bennett had his football and played back and forth with Tim. Sometimes I feel like kicking the football is Bennett’s meditation. It clears his mind and takes him back to zero, so we really try to work it in whenever we can during a busy trip. Nate started playing in the sand, and soon the boys were doing quick changes behind Tim’s coat out of their jeans and into shorts. Playing with the sand turned to running into the sea.

We’ve been fortunate to travel some with the boys before our move, and from Florida to Oregon to Georgia to the UK, I will never tire of seeing the pure awe and joy on their faces as they jump over and over again into the crashing waves of the ocean. I’ll count the shores of Lake Michigan for that too. ☺

The tide was starting to come back in, so as they made sand castles in one spot, the tide would wash it out again. They thought it was hilarious as they picked a spot just beyond the water and then hurriedly built a new sand mound, just to see it wash out again. Mostly they thought they the name they picked for it was hilarious: Mountain Manure, versions 1-10. Oh, little boy humor.

Though we got a peek of the sun, it started to cool and the boys were wet, sandy and starting to shiver. We cleaned off and headed to the nearby Sea Shanty restaurant for dinner, where the boys slopped up bowls of steamed mussels, their go-to meal for any day on the coast.

Would we have loved more time in Anglesey? Definitely. But, it was a great day out and now we are better informed and prepared to plan for the next time.  Those yurts sure book up quickly.