It has been a long and intense season of exams for all three of the girls over the last few months. To celebrate finally reaching the culmination of them at the end of June, I booked us a long weekend in North Wales – a little road trip adventure to discover somewhere new. We arrived on a Thursday evening and headed home on the Sunday morning, so we had two full days (Friday and Saturday) to explore.
We have never been to Wales before – not on purpose anyway. We’ve been accidentally once… for five minutes! Someone (ahem, me) *may* have plugged one wrong letter of a postcode into the SatNav and we unintentionally crossed the border on our way to somewhere entirely different. This was a decade ago and they still tease me about it now. As a result, I figured it was probably about time that we visited deliberately. Many, many people have told me how beautiful this particular stretch of coastline and landscape is, and it’s only two hours away from where we live so it seems like it would be rude not to, really.
Planning A Long Weekend In North Wales
Where We Stayed
I opted to stay in the little town of Rhos-On-Sea, and planned to use that as our base for our long weekend in North Wales. It’s close to both of the main places we wanted to visit (Llandudno and Conwy), and it had a few attractions of it’s own that looked fun. It turns out that it was the perfect place to have chosen. Rhos is a sweet little seaside town (one local shopkeeper I chatted to as we were buying some souvenirs on our first day of exploring – a new magnet for the fridge of course! – described it as a ‘retirement town’) which seemed pretty accurate. It was quiet, had pretty views and contained everything we needed for our stay.
The Airbnb we stayed in was good – there was plenty of space for the four of us, it was only a fifteen-minute walk to the beach and there was a small supermarket literally around the corner for basic supplies. Our host was super-helpful in answering all of my (many!) questions, and he gave us an awesome recommendation for the best local place to get takeaway fish and chips too.
Itinerary -Things To See & Do
As I’ve mentioned before, I love the planning and researching part of a trip as much as I enjoy the experience of actually being there. I spent many hours putting together a long list of things we could see and do during our long weekend in North Wales. It was, admittedly, ambitious – I knew we wouldn’t be able to do them all but I wanted us to have options so if something didn’t work out we had other things to choose from as a bit of a back up.
I always make sure that the girls have input on this stage as well, because it’s their mini-holiday too. They all had a particular thing they really wanted to do: Lola’s wish was to visit Llandudno; Ella hoped to do something history-related; and Mimi was desperate to go to the beach.
In the end, our final list looked something like this:
- Bodnant Gardens
- Welsh Mountain Zoo
- Colwyn Bay beach
- Angel bay (wild seals!) – a recommendation from our host
- Watch a sunset over the sea
- Eat ice cream
- Collect shells at the beach
- Rhos-on-Sea: crazy golf, visit the smallest church in the UK, walk along the promenade, climb Bryn Euryn
- Llandudno: Great Orme (tram or cable car); walk along the pier and go in the arcade; walk along the promenade, Happy Valley Gardens, Alice in Wonderland trail
- Conwy: Conwy Castle, walk over the suspension bridge, walk along the town walls, visit the smallest house in the UK
Spoiler alert… we didn’t do all of it! We did a lot though, especially considering we only had two full days. Our travel diaries and what we got up to each day are shared below – Part Two will be coming shortly.
Travel Diaries
Day 1: Thursday (travel day)
Rhos-on-Sea
Lola had school (and a Maths exam!) on the day we travelled, so we didn’t leave until late afternoon, eventually arriving at around 7.45pm after we’d stopped for a bite to eat on the way.
No matter where we travel to, if we’re anywhere near the coast then the first thing we do when we arrive at our destination is to go and say hello to the sea. It’s a long-standing family tradition so of course we had to uphold it here too. Lola was tired after being at school all day as well as the journey, so she opted to stay at the AirBnB whilst Ella, Mimi and I took a late evening wander down to the beach.
Walking down to the beach from our AirBnB
Rhos-on-Sea has such a pretty seafront
We liked these little gardens, right on the promenade
Rhos-on-Sea beach is lovely soft sand, and there were plenty of shells scattered around for us to collect – I think the tide was going out so they’d likely only just been deposited. We found lots of pretty ones. Mimi also unexpectedly discovered a stranded jellyfish (much to her disgust – she really doesn’t like them!).
We wandered along the promenade for a little way too – it goes all the way along to Colwyn Bay, though we didn’t go that far as I was mindful of leaving Lola on her own for too long and it had also started to drizzle. There were lots of fun activities for kids along the promenade – obstacle courses to avoid the ‘lava’, a little crazy golf course, musical instruments to play, sculptures to admire, seats to relax on, and more.
The sea was calm and peaceful
Collecting shells together
Treasure
Confirmation that we were definitely in Wales…
The floor is lava! We all (me included) had a go at the obstacle courses along the promenade
Looking for more shells on a different stretch of the beach on the way back again
Day 2: Friday
Rhos-on-Sea // Conwy
We decided early on whilst planning our long weekend in North Wales that we would split each day in half. We’ve learnt over the years that what works best for us as a family is to do one activity in the morning, then come back to ‘basecamp’ (our AirBnB or wherever we are staying) for a break in the middle of the day – eat lunch, have some downtime, recharge (both our human energy and our phone/camera batteries) and have a bit of space from each other for an hour or two – and then we head back out for an another excursion mid-afternoon. We do, of course, sometimes do a full day trip as well.
RHOS-ON-SEA
Morning: We opted to stay local for the morning, just to get our bearings and keep it relatively slow after the long day yesterday. We wandered around Rhos-on-Sea and explored it’s many trinket and souvenir shops. The girls bought a few little things and I found a magnet for our fridge at home to remind us of our trip.
From there, we walked all the way along the promenade to the Holy Well & Chapel of St Trillo, known to be the smallest church in the UK. It dates back to the early 16th century and has space for a congregation of just six people, seated on rustic wooden chairs on an uneven stone floor. Underneath the tiny altar is a natural spring, thought to be an ancient well of holy water once used for baptisms and renowned for it’s healing properties. It was very peaceful in there – I’m not religious but I love visiting churches and this one had a unique kind of reverence to it that made it feel particularly special. Outside the church was a small garden full of roses, each one planted in memory of someone lost, as well as a collection of Remembrance Rocks, carefully painted and left as a symbol of love.
It might not have been the most exciting excursion, but it was a memorable one.
Taking in the views
Collecting more shells on the beach
Beach scenes…
Somehow the sea puts everything into perspective. I love how tiny she looks in this photo.
Walking along the promenade – we only saw one other person the whole time we were walking!
The sign outside the Chapel of St Trillo – it’s in such a beautiful location right by the coastline
Chapel of St Trillo – the smallest church in the UK
Remembrance Rocks outside the church
There is only enough space inside for a congregation of six people. The wooden board and grate you can see on the floor in the photo both cover the entrance to the Holy Well.
The walk back to Rhos-on-Sea. It really reminded me of the walk from Portmarnock to Malahide, which Ella and I did in March 2024 when we visited Dublin in Ireland for a few days.
CONWY
Afternoon: Our afternoon expedition was a little bit more adventurous. We drove to the nearby town of Conwy, which is about 10 minutes or so away from Rhos-on-Sea. Arriving into the town is quite a special experience – you drive across a bridge that runs parallel to an impressive suspension bridge and the views of Conwy Castle coming into sight drew audible gasps from all four of us.
Parking was easy (I’d looked up in advance where would be best, and it was quite reasonable price-wise too) and from the car park we were able to walk straight to the Castle entrance via a section of the Town Walls, which were very cool and well worth doing. I knew that Ella, who loves anything and everything to do with history, would really enjoy visiting the Castle – which is essentially just ruins, albeit relatively intact ones – and it surprised me just how much Mimi and Lola were impressed by it too. It’s a great place to explore (for young kids and teens alike), very informative, and there is an excellent gift shop at the end as well. I’m really glad we were able to do this – it was the biggest expense of our long weekend in North Wales and it was definitely worth it.
Walking along the castle walls to get to the entrance of the castle
Conwy Castle
My girls 🙂
It really is very cool inside!
The Suspension Bridge. On the left of the photo is the road you drive into Conwy on from Rhos-on-Sea, and on the right of the photo is a tunnel-bridge for trains!
Conwy Castle was an excellent way to spend an afternoon
Once we’d finished at the castle, we went for a stroll around Conwy itself. It’s a pretty little town – it felt to us like a pleasing combination of Bude and York, so it’s no wonder we liked it there. There were old buildings with cute shops nestled in between them, plus colourful bunting and narrow streets you could easily get lost down.
We stopped at Parisella’s Ice Cream Parlour for a well-deserved ice cream, which all three of the girls declared “absolutely delicious”. We highly recommend, especially as there are so many flavours to choose from. A gentle walk down to the harbour led us to the Smallest House In Great Britain, which is, indeed, very tiny. It was lived in up until 1900, by a man who was 6’3″ tall! Sadly it was closed, so we weren’t able to go inside, but it was fun to see. I amuses me that we’ve now seen the smallest church and the smallest house in the UK, both in the same day!
Ice cream from Parisella’s – there is a second flavour hidden underneath the ones you can see in the photo! Double tubs all the way 🙂
People (and seagull) watching on the harbour-front
The Smallest House In Great Britain
We spent a quiet evening at our AirBnb, ready for another day of adventures. You can read all about what we got up to on the second day of our trip in Part Two, coming soon. In the meantime, below is a vlog of our long weekend in North Wales. I love making these little videos of our travels – watching them back again a few weeks, months and even years down the line brings me so much joy. I hope you enjoy watching it too.
