Cemaes

Pubs with stories

The Stag Inn on the High Street is billed as Wales' most northerly pub, which is the sort of claim you can only make if your village is the most northerly one in the country. It has three bar areas, an open fire, a snooker table, and has been running for over 170 years. The kitchen is known for its beef and ale pie, alongside steak and ale pie, scampi and chips, vegetable lasagne, and a big breakfast — home-made, generous, good value. Dogs are very welcome in the middle bar, where they get a bowl of fresh water first and a treat after. The rear veranda looks out to sea.

A few doors along is Ye Olde Vigour Inn, one of the oldest pubs on Anglesey. The building dates to 1648, and the same family has run it for five generations — the great-great-grandfather bought it around 154 years ago. The lounge bar is a preserved 1960s refit that CAMRA lists as a rare unchanged interior. Before the Catholic church opened in 1965, services were held in that lounge. One reviewer called it "a right of passage for every first time visitor to Cemaes Bay and a must for those that love a true local."

Food beside the harbour

Down at the water, the Harbour Hotel overlooks the bay with its Jolly Sailor Restaurant and a menu of fresh seafood, burgers and steaks. For something quicker, Y Wygyr — named after the river that runs through the village — is an award-winning chip shop with an eat-in restaurant, and The Little Cemaes Lobster Company sells live crab and lobster straight off the boat. Caffi Banc does homemade cakes and light lunches; Caffi Bach, down by the beach, does ice cream and chips.

The village itself is a cluster of whitewashed cottages around one of the most sheltered natural harbours on the north coast, with a working quay, a sea wall people stroll and sit on, and two golden-sand beaches. The name comes from the Welsh cemais, a bend or inlet of the sea. This is a strongly Welsh-speaking place, and the shop and street names show it.

The coast path east

Cemaes sits on one of the more demanding stretches of the Anglesey Coastal Path. Walk east toward Amlwch and you pass Llanbadrig Church, the ruined porcelain works at Porth Llanlleiana, the watchtower at Dinas Gynfor marking the most northerly point in Wales, and the extraordinary ruined bottle kilns of Porth Wen Brickworks. Choughs and peregrines work the cliffs; seals and porpoises are offshore.

The church is worth the climb. St Padrig's at Llanbadrig, reputedly the oldest in Wales, is said to have been founded by St Patrick himself in 440AD after his boat wrecked on the island offshore. Its interior is stranger still — blue tiles and Arabic geometric patterns, paid for by the 3rd Baron Stanley of Alderley, who married a Spanish Moorish woman and converted to Islam.

A bell moved by the tide

David Lloyd George used to come here on holiday. On the bay, a bell installed in 2014 chimes on its own, rung by the rising tide.