Amlwch Holiday Cottages

More About Holiday Cottages in Amlwch

Bull Bay is the village a mile west of Amlwch, and its golf links is the first thing to see. The course runs along the cliff above the bay. On the far holes the ground falls away straight into the sea, and the clubhouse looks north over open sea.

The beach is shingle and rock rather than sand. It is the better for it at low tide, when the pools fill up with things worth looking at. A big slipway runs down into the sea, and the local sea anglers use it hard. The tide here moves a long way.

The cliff path picks up at either end of the bay and stays high most of the way. Go west and it runs on towards Cemlyn and the northern corner of the island. Go east and it drops into the port, then climbs out the other side.

Amlwch is a mile along the coast from Bull Bay, and you can buy anything you forgot to pack there. Staying in holiday cottages near Amlwch keeps the town's shops and cafés close. Caffi Pen y Dref sits on Dinorben Square in the middle of the town.

Names and walks

The names are worth knowing before you arrive. Bull Bay's Welsh name, Porth Llechog, means the sheltered bay. The English name comes from Pwll y Tarw, the bull's pool, a spot down by the shore. Bull Bay is one of the most northerly villages in Wales.

You can walk from Parys Mountain down to Amlwch Port in about an hour and a half. The route is three miles, graded moderate, and it crosses the old copper country.

From holiday cottages near Amlwch it is worth a detour west to Cemlyn. There the National Trust marks an easy one-mile walk out to the headland, Trwyn Cemlyn, which takes 30 to 40 minutes. Dogs are welcome on leads. From the point you can see the shingle ridge, one of only a few in Britain. The car park there floods at high tide, so check the tide table before you leave the car.

Lifeboats and golf

The RNLI opened a lifeboat station at Bull Bay in 1868. It filled the long gap in cover between Moelfre and Cemlyn. Over fifty-eight years its boats went out forty-one times and saved sixty-three lives. They were needed. On 9 March 1877 the liner Dakota ran ashore under the cliffs near East Mouse. East Mouse is a small rocky island off the coast. She was on passage from Liverpool to New York with five hundred and thirty people aboard.

The cliff above the bay, not far from holiday cottages near Amlwch, took a gentler turn in 1913. Bull Bay Golf Club opened on Saturday 16 August that year, laid out by Herbert Fowler of Walton Heath. The Marquis of Anglesey paid for the course and clubhouse, and J.H. Taylor and James Braid, each a five-time Open champion, played the first match in front of a thousand people.