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More About B&Bs and Guest Houses in Conwy

Walk the wall first. The circuit runs three quarters of a mile with twenty-one towers along it, and costs nothing to go up. One stretch, between the Watch Tower and the Wing Gate, is shut for safety work; Cadw hopes to reopen it for Easter 2027. Give the afternoon to Plas Mawr, which Robert Wynn built between 1576 and 1585, open only from March to early November.

The valley behind the town is the part most people miss. The Conwy runs south from the quay towards the mountains, past Rowen, with Betws-y-Coed at the top of it. Llandudno is ten minutes the other way along the coast, and the A55 dives under the estuary in a tunnel rather than crossing the town.

There is a house on the quay at Conwy that is six feet wide. It is about ten feet deep and a little over ten feet to the ridge. There is no room on either floor for a tall man to stand up straight, and for a long time that was not a novelty. It was an address.

The house dates from the sixteenth century, and it was still somebody’s home in the eighteen-nineties. The last man to live in it was a fisherman called Robert Jones, who stood six feet three inches tall. The rooms were too small for him to stand up in properly.

He was moved out in 1900, when the council declared the house unfit for human habitation, and nobody has lived in it since. It is painted red and still stands on the quay.

The quay is still working ground: Sightseeing Cruises Conwy have run half-hour trips off it for three generations, February to October when the tide allows. The Royal Cambrian Academy of Art is a few minutes up the hill, free to visit Thursday to Saturday.

Castell Conwy opens every day but Christmas and New Year. Cadw, the Welsh Government’s heritage body, sells a one-pound ticket to anyone on Universal Credit, and admits every disabled visitor and a companion free. The castle and the town walls together are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, among the finest surviving castles and town walls Edward I built anywhere.

Conwy is small enough that a B&B here means leaving the car all week. Castell Conwy, the quay and the High Street are minutes on foot, and the coast railway runs from Bangor to Chester past the door. Bodnant Garden is twenty minutes up the valley, and the beaches at Llandudno and Rhos-on-Sea ten minutes the other way.