Detour #53: Anglesey, Wales
Race circuits can be bleak places. Often flat, featureless and open to the very worst that the UK’s weather can throw at you, the best way to experience them – ironically for venues that claim to have been built with spectators in mind – is to get in a car and drive as many laps as you, and your brakes and tyres, can manage before experiencing a dizzy spell.
Not so Anglesey. The coastal circuit, which started life as an army training camp, practically dips a toe or two into the Irish Sea, and is built into a natural elevation so that you find yourself distracted from clipping points toward the end of every lap by a panoramic vista that rolls out across the foot of Anglesey island and off into the ocean. You could gladly stay all day. All week, even. But don’t: Anglesey has so much more to offer.
Everyone knows about Welsh roads like those in The Black Mountains but this is altogether different. Approached from the mainland, you glide over the Menai Strait on the A5 and swing hard left, following signs for the A4080. It’s a ring road like no other. Where London’s North Circular offers congestion and Birmingham’s ringway causes confusion, Anglesey’s ‘ringroad’ serves up magnificent seascapes and sightings of Snowdonia. It’s a compact island, around 275 square miles, so you could travel its length in less than an hour, even at a leisurely drive. By taking the long way round, you get more bang for your buck.
There are attractions for all interests, from burial chambers, such as Bryn Celli Ddu, to sea zoos, near Brynsiencyn. Market towns mix with hamlets, churches are perched on cliff tops, copper mines are on display and bucket-and-spade families have some of the UK’s most unspoilt beaches to choose from.
Years ago, I spent several days testing a clutch of fancy-pants cars on the island, and genuinely found it hard to focus on the mouth-watering selection of machinery around the roads, because there was – is – so much to see and admire through the windows.
If you’re taking your time, stop over at Trearddur Bay, near Holy Island, and rest up at the Ty Bae, where you’ll drift off at the end of day’s driving and exploring to the sound of the crashing waves. Then complete your slow lap of Anglesey’s other circuit.
Words James Mills Twitter | Instagram
Photography Neil Thomas / Humphrey Mule / Unsplash / Anglesey Circuit
