Harlech Accommodation

More About Harlech

Beneath the town spread the dunes and the long sands of Harlech beach, with a famous old golf course between the two. The views stretch across Tremadog Bay to the peaks of Snowdonia and the Llŷn Peninsula, and Portmeirion, Shell Island and the mountains are all within easy reach.

The Cambrian Coast line stops here, so Barmouth is south along the shore and Porthmadog north without needing the car. Inland, the Rhinogydd rise behind the town. The Roman Steps up Cwm Bychan are the best-known way into them, and despite the name they are medieval packhorse steps. Above the paved section the Rhinogydd are rough, trackless country, so most people walk the steps and turn back.

Harlech Castle was built to be supplied from the sea. When Edward I’s masons put it up in the 1280s the sea came almost to the foot of the rock, and a fortified stairway ran down to a gate on the shore. The sea has since gone; the dunes below the town are what filled the gap.

For most of the seven hundred years since, the way in was round the side. The proper entrance, across the gap in front of the twin-towered gatehouse, had no bridge. Cadw has since put one there: forty-seven metres of steel, deliberately built to look as if it floats, so you now come in the way the builder intended.

That builder was Master James of St George, the Savoyard behind Edward’s castles in Gwynedd. Harlech is one of four — with Caernarfon, Conwy and Beaumaris — inscribed together as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986.

The castle opens all year, with longer hours in July and August and shorter ones in winter. An adult ticket is a shade under eleven pounds in high summer, with under-fives and Cadw members free.

The other thing Harlech is known for is a street, and the usual claim about it is out of date. The street below the castle, Ffordd Pen Llech, was named the world’s steepest street in July 2019 and lost the title nine months later, when Guinness changed how steepness was measured. Nine months as the steepest street on earth is a better story than the one on the postcards.

Down below, the dunes of Morfa Harlech are growing rather than washing away, open all year with the Wales Coast Path running through and dogs on leads from March to July while the birds nest. Royal St David’s, the championship links between the town and the sea, has been there since 1894 and takes visitors daily.