Llandudno West Shore to Llanfairfechan (12 miles)

We took a bus back to the White Rabbit Statute at Penmorfa/West Shore, which was where we had left off last time.

The first leg was a bit confusing. After a short walk along the promenade, the guidebook had asked us to cross a car park towards a Coast Path sign, then follow a narrow path between dunes and beach. We have found in our walk so far that these signs aren't always there, and we didn't see one here, but we did find a narrow path between dunes and beach, and followed that. The book said it was sometimes covered in sand, and soon the path disappeared altogether under sand - but reassurance was provided by the book's map which showed us walking along the high water line and we were definitely between dunes and beach. Less reassuring was the fact that this was at high tide, one of the highest of the year, that beach was really only a metre or two in width..

After a while we really did join the proper path, because this sign said so. It also showed that the path had earlier diverted away from the coast, in a way not shown in our guidebook (apparently updated in 2022). 

Continuing towards Deganwy, we began to benefit from that high tide filling the estuary as it improved the view of proper sea; had we come another time we would have looked over mud banks. We passed Deganwy station and Marina and crossed over the road bridge into Conwy, were we stopped for coffee and cake at Casa Illy. (We like The Jester's Tower but it was closed for building work today.)   

The tide was still high as we carried on along the walkway north of Conwy, and soon after the Beacons we found a little bench in Morfa Conwy where we could stop for lunch. This walk had passed by Deganwy (although in the official path we didn't go past shops) and Conwy town, so we could have stopped somewhere for lunch. However, our plan was to stop about halfway, and halfway meant here, so we had brought a picnic with us. It was a nice quiet area. 

Here the guidebook had warned that we should be diverted around a fenced area, closed between March and June to protect the belted beauty moth in its breeding period. There was no sign of it.

After a grand sandy beach, we eventually joined up with the cycle track running right alongside the eastbound A55 carriageway.   This then winds around the headland, crash barriers separating us from the road to the left, and a sea wall to the right. It's a place to admire the engineering - the railway somewhere underneath, the line of the road built by Thomas Telford, improved in the 1930s with the addition of a tunnel, improved again in the 1980s with a westbound tunnel that by now was out of sight. At the tunnel, the path goes round the outside, following Telford's road. The stack of cliff retained on the outside of the road from that time was probably deliberate : a means of showing off how the engineer had hewn through the cliff. The path continues on the roadside cycle track for quite a while, but eventually both descend to Penmaenmawr promenade. Cafes heralded in the guidebook were closed. 

Looking ahead, we often can see something of the route onwards, but here it was far from clear. Waymarking signs were not always present in all the right places, but here the guidebook description came up trumps and did what it was supposed to do. This took us back uphill to the level of the next set of tunnels, and another old Telford road. This time, we were no longer squeezed along the side of the A55 but walking on a proper old road, climbing well above the Expressway. It emerged in the middle of the two carriageways of the A55 at the Llanfairfechan side, and there's another footbridge to get us inland of the road. We ended our walk for the day at Penmaen Park bus stop: we had worked out that to finish in the middle of either Penmaenmawr or Lalnfairfechan would entail an extra walk to get from the path to the bus route, but here they are both together.

It was dry today, but there are fewer pictures here because it was a little hazy and the views haven't come out so well. We're still not impressed with the waymarkers - many are very old, some have been renewed, and there were some missing at key turning points along the way.