17 Nov 2025

[…Continued from Part 1]

From the town centre I walked through St Cybi churchyard and down the road towards Salt Island. From there I went along Beach Road by which time I was thinking of getting some lunch. I saw a lady with coffee and she told me there was a kiosk selling hot drinks but if I wanted something to eat, there was a cafe near the lifeboat station. I headed there but popped in to the RNLI shop first. Met volunteer Debbie who suggested I go and get something to eat while I waited for a tour of the lifeboat station to become avaialable. Had a panini and a mug of tea in the Marina Cafe Bar and went back to the RNLI shop where Andy was waiting to give me a tour.

The buildings, including the shop and the inshore lifeboat building, once belonged to Trinity House. They were originally used for maintaining lighthouses and buoys. One evening in 2016, one of the buildings (not owned by the RNLI) caught fire. It was next to the inshore lifeboat (ILB) building and luckily the crew were on hand to move the boat and vehicles to a safer place. Andy took me past the burnt out shell of the building and took me round the ILB building. The Holyhead crew has earned and amazing number of medals and awards over the years and details of many rescues were displayed on boards. Andy showed me the ILB called the “Mary and Archie Hooper” and told me that the all-weather boat is stationed in the harbour. He was a very good informative guide and told me all sorts of interesting facts and figures, too many to mention here even if I were able to remember them all.

I left the RNLI shop and continued along Beach Road to a track leading to the breakwater. Here I met Gwyn who was walking the same path and we started chatting. He lives in Holyhead and had lost his wife to cancer a few years ago. I told him what I was up to on my charity walk and he joined me for the rest of the way to Breakwater Park near Holyhead Mountain. He is a retired TV aerial installer and was great company. He told me about the breakwater and told me that it’s almost 2 miles long (the longest breakwater in Europe). Built between 1846 and 1873, the stone came from quarries which are now the site of the Breakwater Park. We continued to our destination where there is a car park and he showed me the old brickworks with it’s tall chimney.

I had told Gwyn that I live on the Wirral and had dabbled in astronomy. Gwyn’s stepson Gavin is president of the Anglesey Astronomical Society and they meet at Breakwater Park. He told me that Gavin had aquired a large Dobsonian mounted telescope hand-built by a chap called Rob from the Wirral who had passed away recently. It has a large 19 inch mirror and Rob had constructed a very sturdy observatory complete with fibreglass dome in his back garden in Little Neston. Gavin secured funding for a new observatory to house the telescope through a GoFundMe page which is currently at 91% of their £3500 target. Please donate if you can and help them reach their target!

I had a couple of hours to spare so Gwyn very generously offered to take me to his home for a cup of tea. After that he took me on a tour and went to the South Stack Cliffs Nature Reserve car park when the sun was setting. There was a fantastic panorama of the mountains on the mainland from Snowdonia to the end of the Lleyn Peninsula. After visiting Trearddur Bay he dropped me off at the station! I’ve been overwhelmed by the friendliness and generosity of people I’ve met on my walks and he is way up there with the best. Thank you so much Gwyn.

6.84 miles

The Telescope move 22-23 Nov 2025

I got a text message from Gwyn to invite me to go down to Little Neston at the weekend to see the telescope being moved. Unfortunately, I was ill on the Saturday but went to see them on the Sunday. The telescope mirror and other parts had already been transported to Anglesey but there were quite a few helpers dismantling the observatory. It had been hoped to arrange for a crane to lift the dome off the base but the new owners of the house were moving in the following day so plan B was put in operation. This involved cutting up the fibreglass dome for reassembly at Holyhead. Everybody helped get the pieces down and out to the road where a van and trailer were waiting and they managed to get the job done and the bits back to Anglesey before it got dark.