Coast Walking (Wales): Llandudno to Conwy 7/7/2012****

From the hotel we walked round the harbour past the pier and into the Marine Drive on the east side of Great Orme. Warmer and brighter today we immediately saw common blues in abundance on the roadside plants, meadow browns and a hummingbird hawk-moth feeding on flowers. Rounding the bend to the north side it was cooler, shadier and the cliffs wet with running water in places, providing a different flora from the south side previously explored – lesser meadow-rue, butterwort, fragrant orchid, sea-plantain, sea campion, slender St. John’s-wort, cross-leaved heath. A whitethroat stood on top of a bush, apparently waiting for us to move on before it began its song, or perhaps it was wary of alerting the kestrels searching overhead. As we approached the head of the Orme there were many kittiwakes nesting on the sea-cliffs below and a raft of guillemots on the sea. The slopes below the cliffs were not as flowery as on the sunny side but had lots of dropwort. The lighthouse at the end is now a bed-and-breakfast resort. Just past it and a roadside café the cliffs were protected for nesting birds by prohibiting climbing between March and the end of July. Here we had the great luck to see a pair of choughs feeding three young ones, whose odd squealing cries first alerted us to the fact that they were not jackdaws or crows, and a look through the binoculars clearly showed the curved red bill and red legs. The turf here had several toadstools – turf mottle-gill, meadow puffball and frosty funnel. On bell heather was a small iridescent green moth, a Green Oak Tortrix. Rounding the western end we caught sight of Anglesey across the sea. We left the official coast path, which continues to follow Marine Drive, to take a steep, narrow path down the rocky slope and bracken to a wide path below. At the top were lots of hoary rock-rose, a few of which still had their small yellow flowers, although swamped by surrounding common rock-rose in full flower. Dark green fritillaries flew around and one stopped to feed on wild thyme. There were a few clumps of wild clary by the upper rocks, mostly over. Further down we saw knotted pearlwort, slender St. John’s-wort and seaside centaury amongst a strange mixture of gorse, bell heather, rock-rose, dropwort and thyme. At the bottom were many seed-heads of spring squill, fully open to release the ripe black seeds, the stems completely brown and the leaves gone altogether. There were numerous parrot waxcaps and the yellow species Hygrocybe persistens. On the rock-rose was a lurid bolete, a species usually associated with beech and oak trees. The hoverfly Chrysotoxum bicinctum fed on flowers. Plants of sea storksbill, as well as common storksbill, grew on old concrete platforms and tarmac roads, remnants of the Royal Artillery’s Coast Artillery School which moved here from Essex during WWII. There was also some long-stalked cranesbill. The tarmac track eventually led past a line of houses on the coast, when alien plants like wall and Himalayan cotoneasters and rose of Sharon began to appear. This road then rejoined Marine Drive as it re-enters Llandudno on the SW side. A track continued at the top of the shore beside the road, and rock samphire appeared on the walls and cliffs, as well as more garden escapes, like Sicilian chamomile. The high tide just left a small beach below headed by dunes with little other than marram and a little sea holly, but some sea sandwort, sea heath and sea rocket on the stony shore. A pool on our left had a pair of swans and a group of herring gulls, while house martins flew over. The shore fringe continued with marram interspersed with lyme-grass, but at the end of the built-up area a golf-course began, fringed by a wider stretch of dune, where blue Russian lettuce was well established and there were large patches of sea bindweed. Here at a breakwater (Cerrig Duon) we sat to have our lunch overlooking pied wagtails on the beach. We continued between the beach and a narrowing line of dune, with a single clump of sea kale appearing at the top of the former. At Deganwy the railway came near the shore and we walked seaward of it along a metalled way beside the Conwy estuary. Behind railings we saw a dense patch of grass vetchling and we passed a series of bushes of sweetbriar in full flower and apple scent, and an area of rough grass with meadow cranesbill. The shore now was muddier and had a few estuarine plants like sea-lavender and greater sea-spurrey. This easy trail led to the bridge over the Conwy, directly beneath old Conwy Castle, still in decent repair. Just beyond the harbour we found a bus going back to the centre of Llandudno. A quick journey brought us back early enough to wander among the crowd of holiday-makers brought out by the sun and Saturday. Masses of stalls opened all the way to the pier; there were roundabouts and a Punch and Judy show.