10 Jan 2026

My walking buddy, Ian, joined me once again for this walk. We set off across the bridge next to the mighty Caernarfon Castle and walked along the edge of the Menai Strait passing the golf course before turning south along the edge of Foryd Bay

We passed the little redundant church of Saint Baglan off to our left in the fields and stopped for lunch at a picnic spot. We sat and ate our butties in the hull of an old boat which had been repurposed as a seating area. By the way, if there’s anyone reading this who likes hiking with a bedside table lamp, I think you’ve may have left one in the boat!

Before reaching the tidal section of the Afon Gwyrfai the path turned inland to cross the river north of Saron. After walking through Saron the path turned west and returned to the coastal marshes at the bottom end of Foryd Bay. The path goes across a bridge and then along an embankment next to the marshes towards Caernarfon Airport. This part of the route has the unfortunate name of the ‘Mortuary Path’ because victims of accidents at RAF Llandwrog were carried along it to a field hospital nearby.

At the embankment we met Joseph, a semi-professional photographer. He was hoping to photograph a Bufflehead Duck which had been spotted here in late December. It is very rare in the UK being native to the US and Canada. We wished him luck and carried on towards the airport. At the far end we met a bird watcher called Tom Gibson with a scope and just as we were walking away he asked if we were bird watchers because he had a Bufflehead in view. He let us have a look but it was very distant. Unfortunately, after Ian and myself had looked through his scope, he lost sight of it and we felt a bit responsible for that. Sorry Tom! From what I read later, it seems that this winter may be the first time a wild Bufflehead has been seen in Wales.

We walked along the southern perimeter of the airport and caught site of some amazing orographic clouds on the mountains of the Llŷn peninsula.

The path went by the Airworld Aviation Museum so we popped in to have a look around. It’s very good, focussing on the history of RAF Llandwrog which became Caernarfon Airport. They have an impressive collection of aircraft but we didn’t have a lot of time to look around. We then walked south along the shingle beach to Dinas Dinlle hill fort. At this point we realised we had to get a move on in order to catch our bus so we walked briskly up the lane to the A499 where we caught our bus back to Caernarfon.

9.76 miles